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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.

If you or a loved one have ever been sick and in need of care, you’ve probably felt the fear and anxiety of not knowing exactly what was going on and what the treatment would be. And you’ve probably felt relief and comfort if your health care providers made a point of including you in all care decisions. That’s what our patient partner Kyle Warkentin felt during his mom’s care experience, which he shares with us in his “What Matters to You?” story.

As we mentioned in our post about how to create a self-care plan, a good self-care strategy can involve physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual and social aspects. They influence each other and our general well-being, so it’s essential to balance activities. If you often feel like you prioritize some areas and neglect others, it may be time to reevaluate and add new self-care ideas to your list!

Now that you learned  how to get started on self-care, it’s a good time to start creating your self-care plan. It consists of identifying what makes you feel good, how to do more of those things and how to cope if you go through a crisis. Read on to find out how to create your plan!

Happy Patient Experience Week! We want to thank all of you who volunteer your time to improve health care in BC. Volunteering is a selfless act and we know that it can sometimes take a toll on patient partners, especially when it involves sharing personal experiences. That’s why we’ll be publishing a series of posts about self-care this week, as caring for yourself is not only very important for your own health and well-being, but it also helps you care for others too!

We’re celebrating National Volunteer Week 2019 and thrilled to see all the amazing results of patient partners’ work across the province! One of them is Lisa Ridgway, from Victoria, who is participating in patient-oriented research to help improve mental health care in BC. Read her post to learn more about her experience.

Quality Forum 2019 may be over, but you can learn from it through more than 100 videos, photos and presentation files now available online. Watch the plenaries, the debate and recorded sessions, download presentations and much more!

We’re excited to announce that the BC Patient Safety & Quality Council, which administers PVN, will be sponsoring 60 patient partners to attend two amazing learning opportunities over the next few months. The sponsorship is one of several measures the Council has been taking to increase capacity in our network, and we’d like to invite you to be one of our sponsored patient partners!

You may remember that starting in December 2018 and through January 2019, the BC Patient Safety & Quality Council conducted a provincial engagement with us to gather the members’ views on patient partner compensation. We’re excited to announce that there was terrific participation from patient and health care partners…

As the months fly by and we plan blog posts in 2019, we looked back to discover the most popular posts over the past year. It turns out you were really interested in the experiences of our patient and health care partners. Take a look at our five most popular blog posts in 2018 and catch up if you missed any of them: