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Because your voice matters.

Participant, Planning and Implementation of Patient and Family Inclusion in Cardiac Care Assessment and Direction at Kelowna General Hospital

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Open to Interior Region, Patient partners in the Interior Region who’ve experienced care from Cardiac Sciences at Kelowna General Hospital

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Currently, there is very little in terms of an organized mechanism available for patients to provide feedback and influence the cardiac care and processes of care that they receive as an inpatient or outpatient of Kelowna General Hospital. If you would like to ensure patients feedback will be heard and considered in cardiac care improvement, please consider joining this team in developing a practical plan for patient feedback!

Open to: Patient partners in the Interior Region who’ve experienced care from Cardiac Sciences at Kelowna General Hospital

Lead Organization or Department

Interior Health – Kelowna General Hospital, Department of Cardiac Sciences / Cardiology

Aim

The purpose of this program is to create practical and sustainable mechanisms for relevant and timely feedback from patients and families for assessing and improving cardiac inpatient and outpatient care connected to Kelowna General Hospital. The role of the patient partner will be to join health providers and administrators in weekly discussions to develop: 1) a practical feedback strategy 2) implementation plan with tools and 3) a plan for assessment of patient feedback

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

  • Comfortable in working in groups
  • Experience with cardiac care connected to Kelowna General Hospital (inpatient or outpatient)
  • Comfortable helping to break new ground

Logistics

  • Vacancies: 2
  • First Meeting Date: TBD
  • Length of commitment: up to 1 year
  • Meeting Frequency: Approximately 1 hr / week. May be more initially
  • Meeting format: in-person preferred, tele/video conference an option

Reimbursement

Pre-approved travel and parking expenses will be reimbursed according to Interior Health policy.

Background

Cardiac care, like many other aspects of care at KGH, is provided for the benefit of patients. How care is organized and delivered is primarily decided by and provided by health care providers with little or no direct patient input. This lack of ability of patients to provide feedback on the care they received significantly limits the program's ability to properly assess the care that is delivered and identify ways to improve this care. Similarly there is no patient voice at the leadership level. Decisions are made with the express goal to improve processes of patient care without a patient voice at leadership levels identifying what is important to them. Currently, patient’s ability to directly impact care is limited at this time primarily to complaints and letters of thanks. There is very little in terms of an organized mechanism available for patients to provide feedback and influence the care and processes of care that they receive. The first goal of this program is to create practical and sustainable mechanisms to allow patients and their families provide relevant and timely feedback on the care they have received in all aspects of the patients cardiac journey (inpatient and outpatient). Currently there is no patient voice on any cardiac leadership committee. The second goal of this project is to work with the Patients Voices Network to identify and work with a patient partner at the leadership level. This representative will help ensure that patient perspective is involved in every leadership discussion and help guide cardiac care at KGH in a patient and family centred manner. Project Deliverable: 1) Develop a strategy (along with admin and ultimately patient partners) to create practical and sustainable mechanisms to allow patients and their families to provide relevant and timely feedback on the care they have received in all aspects of the patient’s cardiac journey (inpatient and outpatient). 2) Develop the tools to provide this feedback 3) Develop a system to assess this feedback

Health Care Partner Contact Information

Jacquelyne Foidart
Engagement Leader, Patient and Public Engagement | Thompson Cariboo
250.879.1077
jfoidart@bcpsqc.ca

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.