Posted • Last updated
Closed
Commitment: Long-term
Connection method: Virtual
Open to Provincial Region
Last updated
Volunteer Opportunity
Join us on as we work to better support patients & families on their journeys through improved perinatal care across BC. If you have recent personal experience accessing and navigating health care services through pregnancy and post-birth, we’d love to learn from and work with you as we strive to embed perinatal care in every Patient Medical Home (PMH) – Primary Care Network (PCN) in BC. Read on to learn more about this working group opportunity!
Lead Organization/Department:
Shared Care Perinatal Community of Practice Steering Committee
Aim
The Shared Care Perinatal Community of Practice (CoP) PMH-PCN Working Group aims to embed perinatal care in every PMH – PCN community to meet population and community needs.
The patient partners will be key to the success of the Working Group by providing unique perspectives as the individuals having received/receiving perinatal care, resources, and supports as we strive to improve the pregnancy journey, and overall health and well-being of young and aging women, and their babies.
Share your feedback & provide input on activities & approaches to embed perinatal care in every PMH-PCN community to meet population & community needs & improve perinatal care.
Participation includes (but is not limited to):
• Attending the majority of regular working group meetings.
• Attending a broader engagement event (potentially in-person) to share learnings, updates, and to gather feedback on Working Group activities.
• Championing the CoP’s perinatal and PMH-PCN work.
• Sharing opportunities to create impact for perinatal care within the PMH-PCN.
• Being a collaborator for the group’s outcomes.
Level of Engagement:
This opportunity is at the level of collaborate on the spectrum of engagement. The promise to you is that the health care partner will work together with you to formulate solutions and incorporate your advice and recommendations into the decisions to the maximum extent possible.
Eligibility
Open to patient partners across the province who:
• Have direct experience (within the last 5 years) with prenatal and/or postnatal care, resources, & supports. This includes care, resources, and supports from family physicians, obstetricians, midwives, nurses, educators, and community organizations
• Are comfortable using Zoom to attend virtual meetings
• Are comfortable sharing their story in a group environment
As connection and relationship building is important to the Shared Care Perinatal CoP, we would like to meet with short listed patient partners as part of our selection process.
If you have a strong interest in this work but have not yet completed a PVN orientation and Patient Partner Commitments, , 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: 1 – please note that an additional patient partner is also being recruited from existing CoP networks.
• Date and Time: Monthly working group meetings to be initiated, ideally by mid-May, 2022: date and time TBD, although the duration of meetings would be 1.5hrs. Meeting times may also vary (including mornings, afternoons, or early evenings). There may also be opportunities to attending further education events and related activities.
• Location: Online meetings via Zoom. However, there is the potential for an in person engagement event in Vancouver, in the Fall of 2022 (Date TBD).
• Commitment: 12 months.
Reimbursement
No out of pocket expenses are anticipated for the virtual component of this engagement opportunity. However, if you meet the eligibility criteria, but have concerns about your ability to participate, please contact Cassy Mitchell cmitchell@bcpsqc.ca to see if support options are available. We are always seeking to better understand and reduce barriers to participation.
For attendance at an in person event (in Vancouver) all travel expenses will be reimbursed.
Background
The Shared Care Committee, representing a partnership between Doctors of BC and the Ministry of Health, has approved the development of and funding for a Perinatal-focused Community of Practice.
We’re defining a Community of Practice as a group of providers and other partners who share a common interest in, and concerns about perinatal care issues and who work together to address these interests and concerns by interacting on an ongoing basis.
The Shared Care Perinatal Community of Practice (CoP), transitioning from and leveraging the Shared Care Maternity Spread Network, will provide an opportunity to support the pregnancy and overall health and well-being of young and aging women, and their babies, as well as address gaps in the system by equipping physicians and their perinatal care partners with resources to foster relationships, share knowledge (best practice, successful solutions) and together optimize patient care.
The Shared Care Perinatal CoP will align and integrate with the provincial Maternity Services Strategy, Patient Medical Homes, and Primary Care Networks and will leverage learnings from the Child and Youth Mental Health and Substance Use CoP.
Shared vision for the Perinatal Care Community of Practice:
Perinatal care is person and family-centred, timely and accessible, culturally safe (Indigenous cultural safety and humility), and seamlessly integrated as a core service of the Patient Medical Home – Primary Care Network.
To begin building the Community of Practice, on November 29, 2021 we brought together a group of 35 physicians, other health care partners, and patient partners for a successful five hour interactive virtual engagement session during which partners provided valuable input on perinatal priorities and helped to set concrete actions to improve the patient and family pregnancy journey (including prenatal and postnatal care, services, and supports) in communities throughout BC. One of the key next steps is to establish and activate a Perinatal Community of Practice Working Group to help advance our work.
Members of the Shared Care Perinatal Community of Practice Working Group: Patient Medical Home – Primary Care Network will include representatives from family practice, obstetrics-gynaecology, midwives, Ministry of Health, Doctors of BC, Perinatal Services BC, Indigenous partners and patient partners.
Information about the PMH-PCN can be found here: Patient Medical Homes | GPSC (gpscbc.ca)
