Blog

Hello, patient partners! We’ve got an exciting opportunity to share with you: there are openings available for patient partner representatives from the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley to join our Oversight & Advisory Committee!

Health care partners usually come to us for ideas on how to implement person- and family-centred care in their practices. So to celebrate Patient- and Family-Centred Care Month, our engagement leader Cathy Almost put together a helpful list of tips for care providers. Check it out!

October is Patient- and Family-Centred Care Month, a very special month for us! We’ll be celebrating with a series of blog posts about strengthening connections and making health care more person-centred. To kick off, our engagement leader Jami Brown wrote about how we can work together to create a healthy environment of person- and family-centred care.

It is with the utmost respect and admiration that we salute the legacy and life of our patient partner Gerry Johnson. Gerry passed away in July and will be missed immensely by his family, friends and everyone whose spirit has been touched by his kindness and helpfulness.

We’re excited – and proud! – to announce that patient partners Lisa Ridgway and Beverley Pomeroy have launched the first patient-led podcast on patient-oriented research. They’ll use their experience to host conversations with health care researchers and academics, health care decision-makers and other patient partners. In this post, Lisa talks about their motivation to create the podcast and how you can participate.

Sepsis is a life-threatening reaction to an infection that, without timely treatment, can rapidly lead to tissue damage, organ failure and, possibly, death. Since 2012, the BC Sepsis Network has promoted early recognition and treatment of this disease, which causes a death every 3.5 seconds around the world. On September 13, World Sepsis Day, you’re invited to join the Global Sepsis Alliance in the fight against sepsis!

Patient partner Darlene Clayton, from Kispiox, BC, lost her son to an opioid overdose in 2018. In this post, she talks about how an Indigenous approach to wellness could improve treatment for people who use substances.

A retired public health nurse from Esquimalt, Margaret Scott-Peters became a patient partner to share her experience and knowledge to keep improving BC’s health care system. She attended the BC Patient Safety & Quality Council’s Engage to Improve: Creative Solutions for Working Better Together workshop on June 5 and wrote a blog post about her experience. Read on!

Anyone who lives with persistent pain will know how much energy it takes to simply get through a single day. That’s why I asked myself what in the world I was thinking when I applied to attend the intensive three days of meetings, speakers, seminars, field trips, hallways, elevators, no daylight and thousands of people that was the Quality Forum 2019.

Known as the “Small Centre with a Big Heart,” Sunny Hill Health Centre for Children, in Vancouver, provides specialized development and rehabilitation services for children, youth and families throughout BC. The organization saw International “What Matters to You?” Day as a chance to engage staff by encouraging conversations with families. The results were impressive, so we asked Leslie Louie, the centre’s Family Engagement Advisor, to write a blog post about the campaign.