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Because your voice matters.

Health Care Partners

By engaging patients, health care partners can ensure their work reflects the needs and experiences of the people it impacts.

There isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” approach to engaging patient partners. We hope you will access our Guide to Authentic Patient Engagement and video series to help you with the development of your opportunity. The goal is to ensure each engagement opportunity is meaningful for everyone involved.

Who are Health Care Partners?

Health care partners represent organizations that provide health care services in BC. They’re often teams interested in engaging patient partners so that their work is done in partnership with those who it will affect.

The Process

Health care partners create engagement opportunities so that patient partners can be involved in their activities such as committees and working groups.

This process begins by clarifying the patient partner’s role and their level of participation, as well as the aim of your engagement opportunity and your team’s understanding of how to work authentically with patient partners. These are the most important first steps prior to creating the opportunity.

You create an engagement opportunity that ensures everyone begins on the same page, the agenda stays on track and the objectives of the opportunity are achieved.

Read through the Health Care Partner Service User Agreement to know what’s expected from you to be able to use PVN.

Types of Opportunities

Each engagement opportunity is unique. The details depend on the needs of a particular project led by a health care partner. Some examples of opportunities include:

  • Advisory committees and working groups
  • Developing programs and resources
  • Teaching care providers about the patient experience
  • Speaking opportunities at workshops, conferences and other events
  • Surveys, focus groups and other ways to get feedback from patients
  • Patient journey mapping

Contact Us!

If you have questions about becoming a health care partner that weren’t answered here, please contact us!

From Our Community

Agnes Black

Director, Health Services & Clinical Research and Knowledge Translation – Providence Health Care

Agnes Black

It’s really hard to make changes in health care. When a PVN patient partner says, ‘This is important to us’ it keeps us grounded on why a change is needed and keeps us motivated to keep going on projects.