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Because your voice matters.

Patient Member, The Prehab Project at Penticton Regional Hospital

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Open to Interior Region, Patient partners from Penticton/Summerland area

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Do you have an interest in helping to improve the patient experience in the surgical journey? Join this summer project to create prehabilitation education materials.

Open to: Patient partners from Penticton/Summerland area

Lead Organization or Department

Penticton Regional Hospital, Anesthesiology

Aim

The aim is to improve pre-surgical optimization of patients by providing access to education about what prehabilitation is and links to existing community resources in Penticton and/or Summerland that can facilitate prehabilitation. The project is building a collection of online resources which are easily accessible for patients at any stage in their surgical journey. The patient partner will be asked to give a perspective of the surgical pathway as part of our process mapping. We would also like the patient partner to provide input on relevant material for the website content.

Level of Engagement

This opportunity is at the level of consult on the spectrum of engagement. 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 and the surgical journey (pre- and post-op)
  • Preference will be given to patients who have had hip/knee replacement or colorectal surgery at Penticton Regional Hospital
  • Lives in the Penticton or Summerland area or willing to travel to meetings in that area on own expense

Logistics

Number of vacancies: 2 Location, Date, Time and Frequency:
  • The project timeline is July – December 2018
  • There will be one initial meeting in early July and then will meet on an ad hoc basis
  • The group will meet on Tuesdays or Thursdays
  • Meetings will be held in person in either Penticton or Summerland
Initiative Format: Focus group

Reimbursement

Due to the nature of this project there is no funding available for expenses. Patient partners will be responsible for covering mileage and parking associated with attending meetings.

Background

Anesthesiology and other specialties such as Internal Medicine are involved late in the surgical pathway, often only days prior to major surgery after the patients have been on a waitlist for a number of months. This time is a missed opportunity to engage with patients early in optimization for surgery or prehabilitation. This is an improvement project as part of the BCPSQC (British Columbia Patient Safety and Quality Council) Clinician Quality Academy and is based on a community care setting. The project is led by an anesthesiologist at Pentiction Regional Hospital and who has identified this gap in patient care. The project lead would like to build an online website based set of resources/tools that patient can access immediately that the decision is made for surgery or even before hand. This would allow patients to be actively engaged in preparing for their surgery even while on the waitlist. These services serve a geographically diverse patient population where there may be barriers to accessing resources for pre-surgical optimization due to limited community providers in smaller locations. The outcomes measures include an increase in patient reported readiness for surgery and length of stay. Patient surveys will be used to collect one aspect of this data as well as using aggregated data from the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) The team includes the project lead (Anesthesia), an orthopedic surgeon, a physiotherapist, a dietitian, a summer student/intern funded by the Quality Academy and two patient partners. Possible risks would include privacy issues if the patient shares sensitive details with the team. We could mitigate this by being respectful of that as a team and would not need to share the patients details publicly if this is a concern.

Health Care Partner Contact Information

Carol Stathers
Engagement Leader, Patient and Public Engagement | Okanagan, Interior Region
778.516.3308
cstathers@bcpsqc.ca

From Our Community

Nancy J. Wood

Patient Partner, Sidney

Nancy J. Wood

I was thrilled to discover the Patient Voices Network, where the array of places to be the voice of a patient is vast and incredibly interesting. Besides my ongoing “gig” with the BC Emergency Medicine Network, I have enjoyed being involved in several one-off initiatives. I love working with professionals who genuinely value the perspectives of their patient partners.