At the February 25th Patients' Association Open Meeting, renowned Art Therapist Linda Nicholas facilitated a workshop on telling the patient experience through graphic expression. For those unfamiliar with art as a therapeutic technique, the method is generally understood in two ways: to treat the art-making process as therapeutic in itself, or by using art to facilitate the transference process between the therapist and the client making art (more on this here).
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.' â€
We were delighted to come across this Globe and Mail article At Toronto's Mount Sinai, parents get a crash course in caring for their preemie.
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'
This week the New England Journal of Medicine published an article by Dr. Harlan Krumholz that introduces the Post Hospital Syndrome.
First-hand experience of new healthcare advisory panel embeds patient perspectives & input.
Thirty-two citizens with nothing - and everything - in common have come together in a new engagement panel called PANORAMA to help an independent health policy think tank improve the patient and caregiver experience in Ontario.
The Patients’ Association was invited to participate in the Oct 20-22, 2012 Hacking Health event at the MaRS DD centre. Based on the “hackathon†model, the event brought together those with ideas for healthcare applications with programmers, designers, medical professionals and many others, to develop working models -- in two days! Our role was to provide patient insights to the teams as mentors and to participate in the judging of the applications.
Many teams had yet to consider how to include patients in the design process; some had yet to even consider including patients. The Patients' Association wants to help solve this problem.
The Patients’ Association of Canada is here to make your experience count. Since our inception, we have been gathering patient and family stories about the experiences that you’ve had with the Canadian health care system. These stories have come from Canadians of all walks of life: those with severe medical and mental health problems, caregivers, to prominent health care leaders - both pro-active and frustrated with the current state of our system.