patient and family centred care

Several months ago, we introduced you to some of Alberta Health Services' (AHS) Practical Wisdom Tools on our blog. Recently, AHS got in touch to show us 9 new Practical Wisdom Tools on topics like Sharing your Healthcare Story and Emotional Care Pathways. These tools are all endorsed by the Patients' Association of Canada as practical ways to make for better healthcare experiences, and they are attached to this blog post.

Yesterday, the first ever meeting of Patient and Family Advisers (PFAs) was held at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto. Patient and Family Advisers from Thunder Bay to Halifax were there to get to know each other and work on issues that they felt strongly about. Everyone there wanted to build a strong national network of advisers in order to bring a helpful patient and family voice to healthcare.

The Family and Patient Advisory Council at Sudbury's Health Sciences North have suggested a novel idea toward improving the patient experience in their emergency room. They've likened the idea to having "Wal-Mart greeters" in their emergency room. A staff member from Health Sciences explains the idea for the new role:

“It would be someone who would talk to you and say 'Can I get you a glass of water?' or 'You're cold. Can I get you a blanket? or 'Your situation seems to have worsened. Let me get the nurse, and she'll come and check you.' ”

Patient engagement in health care appears to be entering a new phase. The question for many providers and researchers is now, “How can we best help patients become more active participants in health care?”

Check out a new video series titled 'Open Meetings: Exploring the Patient Perspective.' Watch the first video: 'Key Performance Indicators for Patient Centred Care | Open Meeting: January 17, 2013'

Our friends at Alberta Health Services (AHS) have been taking great steps toward improving the patient experience. Recently Willow Brocke, Director of Patient Engagement at AHS, shared these evidence-based, leading practices with us. They're called Practical Wisdom Tools, and you can find them at the bottom of this blog post.

Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, identify and track goals that are important to an organization. At the Patients’ Association of Canada we are determined to develop such KPIs from a patient and family perspective. These indicators will help us measure the extent to which an organization achieves its goal of being patient and family-centred.