Interview Participants, Review of Routine Testing Before Surgery

Are you interested in sharing your experiences of testing before surgery? Your input can help shape provincial government policy regarding whether cardiac screening is routinely required before surgery and improve the care received by other patients.

Open to: Patient partners across the province

Lead Organization or Department

O'Brien Institute for Public Health, University of Calgary

Aim

This Health Technology Review will study whether it is necessary to include cardiac testing as part of the routine screening patients undergo before a surgery. The review will not consider screening requirements for patients with a known heart condition or those undergoing cardiac surgery. The review will result in a final report that includes recommendations to the Ministry of Health. Patients will be invited to participate in a short telephone interview about their experience of screening before surgery. The information gathered in these interviews will assist the research team to better understand and identify patient- and family- centred recommendations with respect to pre-operative cardiac testing.

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

• Experience with surgery in the past five years.
• Comfortable talking about your or a family member’s experience related to screening prior to  surgery, and results of that testing.
• Ability to participate in an English-language telephone interview.
• Preference will be given to ensuring that patient partners are representative of a variety of experiences which may be affected by factors such as age, health concerns, and access to health services in the patient’s home community.
• Exclusion criteria: surgical experience is with heart surgery; patient partners with a pre-existing heart condition are not eligible to participate
• 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 Leah Smith directly.

Logistics

• Vacancies: 10-15
• Date and time: Telephone interviews to be conducted between July 31 and September 8 (no interviews will be conducted between August 9 and 15). In order to provide maximum choice for patient partners, interviews can be conducted any day of the week, and anytime between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. PST
• Location: Telephone. The patient partners will be given a toll-free teleconference number to call, or will be called by the interviewer
• Commitment: One time interview; under 1 hour

Reimbursement

No out-of-pocket expenses are expected to be incurred.

Background

The BC Ministry of Health has a contract with the University of Calgary to do studies to help inform their policy development. The Health Technology Review (HTR) is a joint BC Ministry of Health and Health Authority process used to provide evidence-informed recommendations about which non-drug health technologies should be publicly provided in the province. Additional information on the HTR process is available online at www.health.gov.bc.ca/htr. All information provided is confidential and will only be reported in a manner that protects individual privacy. Information related to privacy of personal health information will be shared with participants at the beginning of the interview. After the interview, participants will be provided with a summary of what was learned through the interview process. This will include a brief description of the information incorporated into the final report and policy options.

Health Care Partner Contact Information

Leah Smith
Engagement Leader, Patient and Public Engagement | Southern Vancouver Island
778.678.3977
lsmith@bcpsqc.ca