Our Commitments for Partnering Together

It’s important that engagement opportunities are meaningful for both health care and patient partners. To support this, we’re pleased to share the new Health Care Partner Commitments, which was created with input from health care and patient partners who participate through PVN. It’s been added to our online materials and built in to our engagement request process.

Many health care teams ask, “How can you help us?” and this commitments document helps to answer that question. It outlines the support health care partners who lead an engagement opportunity can expect from the BC Patient Safety & Quality Council, which administers PVN, as well as what their responsibilities are towards patient partners they work with. We heard that this document is a helpful communication and educational tool, particularly for those new to patient engagement. You can use it to:

• Assess readiness to engage.
• Access links to more resources.
• Support you to work through the steps of meaningful engagement.

Consultation on this document included feedback from health care partners across the province and from members of PVN’s Indigenous Inclusion and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Working Groups. It then received input and endorsement from PVN’s Oversight & Advisory Committee which includes perspectives from a wide group of heath care and patient partners.

This document complements the Patient Partner Commitments. You’ll notice it has a new name (previously called “Volunteer Agreement”) and a few updates since it was last refreshed in 2019. Patient partners acknowledge these commitments when joining PVN and it’s another important tool to outline the shared responsibilities and supports available.

Thank you to all our health care and patient partners for reviewing these commitments! Our goal is to support meaningful opportunities for everyone to work together and part of that is to continuously improve our communication and support.

Would you like more information? Reach out!

If you have any further questions about the new Health Care Partner Commitments or updated Patient Partner Commitments, we’re happy to speak with you! Email us at pvn@bcpsqc.ca. There are also many answers to questions about how PVN works on our website.