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Because your voice matters.

Patient Speaker Panel: Connect and Communicate to Impact Patient Outcomes, BC Chiropractic Association

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Open to Provincial Region, Patient partners across the province

Last updated

Are you someone who has benefited from chiropractic care? Can your experience with care help provide a teachable moment for chiropractors? Help BC chiropractors understand how ‘soft skills’ (personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people) are fundamental to positive patient experience and outcomes.

Open to: Patient partners across the province

Lead Organization or Department

BC Chiropractic Association (BCCA)

Aim

The aim of this initiative is to provide the patient perspective at the BC Chiropractic Association’s 2017 BC Chiropractic Convention. The theme of the convention is Connect. Communicate. Impact. We are seeking patient partners who have had both positive and negative (ideally both) experiences seeking chiropractic care. The purpose is for patient partners to share their stories in how good communication skills, empathy, and a patient-centred approach to care results in better patient outcomes.

Level of Engagement

This opportunity is at the level of consult on the spectrum of engagement (www.iap2.org). The promise to you is that the health care partner will listen to and acknowledge your ideas and concerns, and provide feedback on how your input affected the decision.

Eligibility

The opportunity is open to patient partners throughout the province but preference is given to those residing in the Okanagan who:
  • Have utilized chiropractic services to help with musculoskeletal pain (back, neck, headache, joint pain etc.)
  • Have had a good or bad (or both) experience with a chiropractor based as a result of the chiropractor’s approach, soft skills, ability to communicate and are comfortable speaking about how the experience affected outcomes, their perception of chiropractors/chiropractic, and/or their likelihood to recommend chiropractic care to friends and/or family members.
  • Are comfortable speaking to a large group (approx. 150 attendees)
  • Patient speakers will be required to participate in story development training (done via a webinar) with BCCA staff, and complete a story development worksheet, prior to speaking at the panel.
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: 5
  • Location: Delta Grand Okanagan Hotel, 1310 Water St, Kelowna, BC
  • Date and Time: Friday, November 3, 2017 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm
  • One time event, 10 minutes sharing of the patient partner’s chiropractic care story, plus Q&A (20-30 min)
  • There will be a 1 hour story development webinar, prior to this date, at a date and time to be determined

Reimbursement

BCCA will cover the cost of expenses related to participating in this event; this will include reasonable travel costs, one-night hotel stay (if required and justifiable, for example, if coming from out of town) and other small relevant expenses (meals etc.)

Background

The purpose of engaging patients in this initiative is to highlight how patient experiences are shaped by strong soft skills and how these play a critical role in outcomes, relationship building, and practice success. We want attendees to understand how good communication and strong soft skills (personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people) help provide health care that focuses on patients, treats patients as an integral part of the care team, and brings a patient-focused lens to care improvement. Patient partners will be asked to attend the patient panel session at our convention. The panel will be composed of two parts: Part 1: each patient partner will briefly (~10 minutes) share a story relating to a positive and/or negative experience with a chiropractor and how that (those) experiences affected their care/their outcome/their attitude towards the profession. Each participant will offer a suggestion for something that a chiropractor can do in his/her practice to improve patient experience. Part 2: Panel participants will participate in a question and answer session with our attendees, in order to help teach them how communication and patient-centred care make a big difference in the lives of patients. Patient speakers will have the opportunity to share their unique experience with chiropractic care as part of a 4-5 patient speaker panel during our annual Chiropractic Convention. The theme of the convention is Connect. Communicate. Impact. Convention sessions will centre on the importance of strong soft skills, such as communication, to help improve patient outcomes. The patient speaker will discuss an experience as a chiropractic patient. The story should describe a positive event with a chiropractor in the speaker’s personal healthcare journey, an event that could have gone better in the healthcare journey, and a suggestion to chiropractors of one thing to do in their practice that would make a difference.

Health Care Partner Contact Information

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

From Our Community

Shana Ooms

Executive Director of Primary Care Strategy, Policy and Quality — BC Ministry of Health

Shana Ooms

Where those of us in the room may have debated policy or wording, patient voices made sure patients were top of mind. And as a result, significant improvements were made to simplify something that was otherwise complex. Patient voices at the table bring us back to reality in terms of what we are trying to achieve.