Resources
Partnering with Patients and Families in Patient Safety Incident Reviews
Date: December 16, 2020
Filed under:
Clinical Care, Featured, Improve Clinical Care, Advance the Patient Voice, Cultural Safety & Humility, Culture Improvement, Improve Culture, Quality Café, Sharpen Your Skills, Webinar
As the health care system provides care and responds to COVID-19, there have been gaps in service identified by health care providers, patients, families and the public. In establishing a person- and family-centred approach to care delivery, Susan Heathcote and Elizabeth Baron from Vancouver Coastal Health’s Client Relations and Risk Management team have realized that patients and families are partners in the care that’s provided, as they may be the end provider of care when an individual returns to their home.
Providing care in various health care settings has challenges, whether it be in the emergency department, the home or a long-term care facility. Despite the health care system’s best efforts, patients may inadvertently be harmed from the care provided (or from a lack of care provided). Hearing from care teams as to what went wrong and what can be done to improve at the system level is well understood and practiced. Patients and families are often not invited to participate in patient safety event reviews and without that, a fundamental perspective is missed, potentially leading to the development of recommendations that don’t mitigate the entire risk.
As health care providers who review patient safety events, the Client Relations and Risk Management team knows that there needs to be clear and intentional engagement of patients and families to ensure a fulsome understanding of the event itself or the decision making up to the time of the event occurring.
Learning Objectives:
After this webinar, you will be able to:
- Describe why the patient and family voice is essential in reviewing patient safety incidents and developing recommendations to support changes at the system level and ultimately support the delivery of quality health care.
- Reflect on the tangible ways to engage patients and families in the quality review process to enable development of recommendations that will truly mitigate the harm patients experience
For the purpose of this webinar ‘patient’ will reference and include clients, patients or residents. Additionally, ‘family’ references any person who the individual self-defines as family which may include husband, child, mother, same-sex partner, friend or other individual deemed to be a support to the individual.
About The Presenters:
Susan Heathcote
Regional Director, Client Relations and Risk Management
Vancouver Coastal Health
Elizabeth Baron
Director, Client Relations and Risk Management
Patient Care Quality Office
Vancouver Coastal Health
Watch the recording: