Member, Royal Jubilee Hospital Rapid Access & Discharge Unit Project

The Royal Jubilee Hospital Emergency Department needs your help to improve the care experience for patients requiring a short-term stay up to 24 hours.  Patient perspectives are needed to inform the development of a new Rapid Access & Discharge service, which will provide short-term intensive support, monitoring, investigation, treatment and a safe discharge home.

Open to: Patient partners from the Greater Victoria area

Lead Organization or Department

Island Health, Royal Jubilee Hospital Emergency Department

Aim

A new Rapid Access & Discharge Unit (RADU) is coming to the Royal Jubilee Hospital (RJH) this fall.  This new unit will provide intensive support, monitoring, investigation and treatment for short-term stays up to 24 hours and facilitate safe discharges back to the community. We are seeking the perspective of patients who have attended the RJH Emergency Department and have required admission to an inpatient unit. By learning about and better understanding your experience, we can shape the development of this new service to improve the patient experience and better address patient needs from the outset.  As a core member of the project team, we are looking for patients who are willing to question and challenge the evolution of the service.

Level of Engagement

This opportunity is at the level of involve/collaborate on the spectrum of engagement.  The promise to you is that the health care partner will work with you to ensure that your ideas and concerns are reflected in recommendations and provide feedback on how your input affected the decision.

Eligibility

• Comfortable to share your experience
• Able and willing to ask tough questions and challenge the status quo
• Interested in quality improvement and committed to participating in the implementation and assessment of improvement ideas with the broader team
• Committed to ensuring that patient needs and experiences remain at the forefront of project discussions
• Patients or family partners who have received care within an Emergency Department, preferably at RJH
• Please note:
  • This opportunity is not open to patient partners who are currently employed by Island Health
  • The placement process for this opportunity may include an informal interview between the volunteer and the health care partner
  • Applicants must have previously attended a PVN orientation session and completed the Volunteer Agreement. If you have not attended an orientation session but you are interested in this opportunity, please contact Kira Tozer directly to see if accommodations may be possible.

Logistics

• Vacancies: 2
• Date and time: TBD. An initial stakeholder meeting is scheduled for June 25^th.  Bi-weekly meetings are proposed over July & August to identify opportunities, test practice changes, review proposals and assess hospital data. The RADU is scheduled to launch in September, and the project team will continue to meet monthly to evaluate its outcomes over the subsequent 6 months.
• Location: Meetings will be held at RJH. Teleconference participation is available, although in-person participation is preferred.
• Term: 8-9 months.

Reimbursement

Mileage/transportation and parking costs to attend meetings will be reimbursed by Island Health.

Background

Current research has shown that intensive support from an Emergency Room Physician over a 24-hour period can reduce the overall length of stay for a patient requiring a short length admission to the hospital. By utilizing a designated care space adjacent to the Emergency Department, we hope that we will be able to support patients to move out of the busy Emergency Dept. in a timely manner to improve the patient experience and enable the patient to return safely to their home environment. The care settings most impacted by this initiative are the Emergency Department, Area C (an inpatient area connected to the Emergency Dept.) and acute care. Core project team members will include the Emergency Department Manager, a Medical Physician Lead, patient partners and members of nursing and therapy teams. The RADU service will launch in early September and we will continue to evaluate its outcomes over the next 6 months. We plan to keep our patient partners fully updated over this time frame and hope they will continue to provide input on the service as it rolls out.

Health Care Partner Contact Information

Kira Tozer
Engagement Leader, Patient & Public Engagement | Vancouver Island
250.888.4525
ktozer@bcpsqc.ca