Collaborator, Patient Care Quality Office/Patient Safety Investigations

Interior Health’s Patient Care Quality Office is working to ensure our processes are patient-centred and informed by patient perspectives. We are seeking patient voices to help us build compassion, empathy, and acceptable outcomes into our concern resolution program for patients and families. In addition, there is an opportunity to collaborate on our process to review and revise the way we respond to harm (manage incidents) in Interior Health.

Open to: Patient partners in the Interior region

Lead Organization or Department

Interior Health, Patient Care Quality Office

Aim

Our Patient Care Quality Office will be reviewing our processes for communicating with patients about our services and timelines; responding to complaints and recommendations; resolving concerns; closing the loop after recommendations and investigations; and evaluating our services. We want to ensure our processes are patient centered and guided by patient perspectives and insights. A secondary project is to review and revise our incident management policy and processes for Interior Health. Patient partners will have an opportunity to collaborate and inform our response to harm in healthcare.

Level of Engagement

This opportunity is at the level of collaborate on the spectrum of engagement. The promise to you is that the health care partner will work together with you to formulate solutions and incorporate your advice and recommendations into the decisions to the maximum extent possible.

Eligibility

• Personal health experiences that generated a concern about care received, and resolution (or not) of those care concerns.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• An understanding of how to communicate with empathy and compassion.
• Familiarity with the work of the Patient Care Quality Office would be an asset.

Logistics

Vacancies: 2 Location, date, time and frequency:

• This patient engagement opportunity would ideally begin in February and continue through the next 12 months.
• Meetings will take place at the Community Health and Services Centre in downtown Kelowna and there is an opportunity to attend by teleconference if needed.
• Patient partners may be attending some of the monthly PCQO team meetings, and/or meeting as a smaller working group more frequently, and/or reviewing materials independently between meetings.
• Meeting start times can be flexible between 8 am and 3 pm.
• Patient partners will additionally be invited to attend a two-day workshop with a full team meeting day following, in Kelowna, tentatively scheduled for March or April.
• It is expected that this work will continue over a year

Reimbursement

Coverage for travel expenses (eg. parking) as per IH travel expense policy.

Background

The IH Patient Care Quality Office was created in response to the Patient Care Quality Review Board Act in http://www.bclaws.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/08035_01 . Recent restructuring in IH portfolios and evolution of leadership have prompted an opportunity to re-examine our processes to ensure we are delivering high quality services that are informed by patient perspectives. In addition, our Incident Management policy is up for review and we are embarking on a year-long project to examine and revise the way we respond to harm. Please note that patient partners in this work will be exposed to complaints, concerns, critical incidents and detailed descriptions of events that have been traumatic and distressing for others. This may be triggering or have an adverse impact on them. Opportunities to opt-out and informally debrief will be provided. Patient partners should connect with their personal care providers if further follow-up is needed. The role of patient partners in this work might include: - reviewing our external communication with the public (eg. voicemail, website, intake process) to ensure clarity for scope, outcomes, expectations and timelines; and to ensure we are creating an inviting place for engagement. - collaborating on the redesign of our template letters for responding to care concerns to ensure compassion and empathy are at the forefront. - consulting on the design for evaluation of and integration of learning from our services. - providing an objective patient perspective on our response to concerns to ensure acceptability and resolution. - consulting on our procedures for closing the loop with patients and families following formal recommendations or investigative processes. - reviewing and collaborating on policies during the revision of our process to respond to harm. - participating in learning opportunities related to patient safety and patient concerns management. - providing a patient perspective on our concern resolution processes for specific complaint categories (eg. discrimination; stigma; wait times; medical staff or employee attitude & conduct).

Health Care Partner Contact Information

Carol Stathers
Engagement Leader, Patient and Public Engagement | Okanagan, Interior Region
778.516.3308
cstathers@bcpsqc.ca