Member, Earthquake Health Supply Resource Allocation – Shared Work Team

Sharing health supplies in a fair and equitable way during an emergency takes due care and attention because the need will be great, and it could outstrip the supply quickly. Health Emergency Management BC is seeking two patient partners to be part of a shared work team to create an ethical framework for health supply resource allocation across the province during an earthquake.

Open to: Patient partners in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley

Lead Organization or Department

Fraser Health’s System Level Ethics Consultation Service

Aim

• To create transparent core values and commitments through the development of an ethical framework, in advance of a crisis, for guiding our allocation of health supplies.
• The patient advisor will co-create the framework and provide guidance for subsequent activities associated with sharing the work across the province.

Level of Engagement

This opportunity is at the level of involve on the spectrum of engagement. The promise to you is that the health care partner will involve patients in planning and design phases to ensure ideas or concerns are considered and reflected in alternatives and recommendations.

Eligibility

Patient Partners from the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley who: • Are experienced working in a group setting • Are comfortable sharing their ideas Please note: there will be a meet and greet with work team leads prior to decision If you have a strong interest in this work but have not yet completed a PVN orientation and volunteer agreement, are unsure if your experience is a good fit or feel another format of engagement would work better with your availability, please contact the engagement leader directly.

Logistics

• Vacancies: 2
• Date/time: To be determined, in consultation with work team members
• Commitment: Roughly 10, 2.5-hour meetings, once a month
• Location: Combination of in-person, teleconference and video conference during business hours.  In person meetings may take place at Central City, Surrey

Reimbursement

Preapproved expenses related to travel to in person meetings will be reimbursed according to the Fraser Health Travel policy (including mileage, parking and/or public transit).

Background

Health Emergency Management BC (HEMBC) is sponsoring a process that will lead to the development of an ethical framework for health supply resource allocation for earthquakes that impact the BC health system supply chain. After an earthquake, BC's health system may experience:

• Impacts at health sites (damage to buildings, critical services, loss of utilities, etc.)
• Increase in the number of individuals seeking care for injuries or underlying medical conditions
• Need for medical supplies and equipment that exceeds resource availability
• Impacts to transportation networks for receiving and delivering medical resources

In this context, allocating available resources will be complex. The framework will include:

• Ethically justified criteria to be used to decide who will benefit from scarce resources (and who will not)
• The appropriate decision-makers for using the criteria
• The process through which allocation decisions should be made in the moment
• Support tools and resources

Fraser Health Ethics Services offers a system level consultation service that provides support for administrators, team leaders, policy decision-makers and others to make decisions that have significant ethical implications and which affect groups of patients or a population. The goals of this support are to help a team to deal with a specific challenging problem or question and (more importantly) build the capacity of teams to independently undertake ethics-based decision-making. The consultation process includes active facilitation through a structured decision process.

Health Care Partner Contact Information

Jami Brown
Engagement Leader, Patient and Public Engagement | Fraser Valley
604.510.0449
jbrown@bcpsqc.ca