Member, BC Emergency Health Services Clinical Handover Steering Committee

Volunteer Opportunity
BC Emergency Health Services is seeking Patient Partners to become members of their Clinical Handover Steering Committee. If you would like to share your insights and experiences to optimize communication and the transfer of patient care between Paramedics and Emergency Departments this could be the opportunity for you!

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Lead Organization/Department
BC Emergency Health Services (BCEHS), Quality Patient Safety & Accreditation

Aim
• We know that there are always opportunities to improve communication among health care providers and patients. A new clinical handover tool and process is being developed by BCEHS and piloted as a framework to optimize communication between Paramedics and Emergency Departments to improve patient safety and transition of care.

• The role of the Patient Partner on this committee is to provide insight from a patient and/or family member perspective. This will ensure our services are person and family centred as we develop, implement and evaluate new tools and protocols for optimum transition of patient care from a Paramedic to other providers.

Level of Engagement
This opportunity is at the level of collaborate (at a system-wide strategic leadership level) on the spectrum of engagement (www.iap2.org) . The promise to you is that the health care partner will look to you for advice in developing, implementing and evaluating national, provincial and regional policy and/or research to ensure the health care system is responsive to the patients’ experience as much as possible.

Eligibility
Open to Patient partners across the province who:
• Have experience in the past 2 years as a patient or family member using the services of BCEHS (Ambulance)
• Are comfortable in sharing their experience
• Are able to collaborate by providing input, formulating solutions and recommendations for optimizing the patient and provider experience
• Have access to a computer and are comfortable in attending virtual meetings
• Experience working with teams or committees is preferred but not required

Please note that an informal interview will form part of the selection process for this opportunity.
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 Cassy Mitchell.

Logistics
• Number of vacancies: 2
• Date and Time: Monthly meetings with a 1hr duration between the hours of 8:30am-4:30pm (days vary). There may also be the opportunity to participate in sub-committee meetings which may vary in frequency
• Location: Virtual Microsoft Teams meetings
• Commitment: 6 months with the possibility of an extension

Reimbursement
If you would like to participate in this opportunity, but have concerns about your internet provider and data limit, please contact Cassy Mitchell at cmitchell@bcpsqc.ca otherwise no expenses are anticipated.

Background
Ineffective communication is now a well-recognized contributor to patient harm in hospitals. For some years, research has been suggesting that clinical handover, the transfer of care from one care provider to another, is a critical area for communication problems. The use of current methods in pre-hospital care does not fully address the need for standardized communication of patient information when transferring care from paramedics to hospital Emergency Department (ED) staff or higher level of care paramedics.

We are piloting the implementation of a new standardized clinical handover tool and protocol that has shown to be an effective framework for transfer of patient information between paramedics and Emergency Department care providers in other Emergency Medical Services jurisdictions. A phased Health Authority and region approach will be used to implement and evaluate the use of the tool as a standardized handover protocol followed by a post-implementation analysis to ensure changes in practices are sustained and inform spread across all other ED sites in the province. There will be four phases, and each will include introduction of a new Health Authority and 2 pilot sites. Phase 1 will involve Northern Health Authority.

As we roll out the new tool and process, we are interested to learn how we can:
• Improve communication between providers
• Improve patient safety during clinical handover
• Enhance staff knowledge and understanding of best practices
• Promote utilization of a standardized protocol
• Improve patient and provider experiences
• Inform sustainability and spread of evidence based practices to other sites across the province

Working alongside a variety of health leaders and direct care providers (Paramedics, Doctors, Nurses, etc.), we value the Patient and Family Experience perspective that you as Patient Partner can bring to all stages of the planning, development, implementation, and evaluation of this quality improvement project. We are just in the beginning of phase one roll-out. This is the perfect time to get involved!

Health Care Partner Contact Information

Cassy Mitchell
Engagement Leader, Patient and Public Engagement | Provincial
250.279.o717
cmitchell@bcpsqc.ca