Patients' Association of Canada's blog

Groundbreaking approach holds promise for provincial game-change

The Change Foundation announces the Northumberland Community Partnership as the winner of its 3-million investment in a trail-blazing project: PATH – Partners Advancing Transitions in Healthcare (PATH): a first with Ontario patients. The Northumberland Community Partnership unites 12 health and social care organizations with patients and caregivers who will identify care transition problems across Central East Ontario and work with a full range of service providers to redesign care and improve experiences from 2012-14.

PAULINE W. CHEN - A friend of mine, a brilliant and accomplished academic in her 70s who once specialized in history and literature, recently phoned to ask for medical advice after being discharged from the hospital for what sounded like a mini-stroke. Ever eager to learn something new, she pressed me on “the latest research” and asked what doctors around the country were doing for her condition...

... “I don’t want him to think I’m questioning his judgment,” she added. “I don’t want to upset him or make him angry at me!”

Read the full article here.

The second annual conference of the Patients’ Association of Canada (PAC) was a broad-based discussion of how patients could participate in guiding our health care system. There were 19 separate sessions on a wide variety of topics held throughout the day. The notes will be posted on the web site and commentary will be made available. As you read them, you’ll notice that the topics are wide ranging and full of ideas. Patients are increasingly being engaged with respect to health care governance, and the patient perspective is steadily developing to be included in governance activities regarding the patient experience.

PAC's second conference is fast approaching! We have a great group of patients, health care professionals and board members who have registered for the event, and we're looking forward to an exciting day

For those not attending, stay connected via Twitter, #PACconf !

We'll keep you posted on progress, meaningful discussions, and we'll add some photos while we're at it.

Thanks to our sponsors: Ontario Trillium Foundation, Ontario Medical Association, Saint Elizabeth, Green Shield Canada, William Osler Health System, Lawrence Decter Investment Council, PatientOrderSets.com

Health & Everything Publications and the Patients' Association of Canada present a new book!

May 11, 2012 - Several weeks ago at a Patients' Association public meeting we asked members to use short phrases to describe their experiences in emergency rooms as they are today, or the current state. We then asked them to think about what the experience would be in an ideal or “heavenly” emergency room and finally we asked them to do the same for “the emergency room from hell.”

We then transcribed their comments and made word clouds to display the frequency of the terms they used. Here are the results. Tell us what you think they mean!

Click here for full image!

May 9, 2012 - Last week we went to the Western Canada Health Information Privacy Symposium in Calgary. The participants were largely people who were in one way or another responsible for safeguarding the privacy of patients. In recent years many of the provinces have enacted Freedom of Information laws that are also meant to protect the privacy of patients. They have also appointed privacy commissioners to make sure the new laws are followed. The main reason for the laws has been the concern that there is an increased risk of breaches of privacy as health records are computerized.

May 7, 2012 - The Professional Association of Internes and Residents of Ontario (PAIRO)held its awards dinner on Friday night. They gave awards to individuals and programs for teaching and for being especially sensitive to the needs of doctors in training. This was the first time that patients were represented on the PAIRO jury so it was a big step for PAIRO and also for the Patients’ Association of Canada.

The jury process was pretty much the same as PAC’s process for the Patients’ Choice Awards. There were numerous letters of nomination that had to be read and discussed. All the nominations came from medical trainees, and the quality of the nominating letters was the most critical part of deciding who would win. Because there were many outstanding nominees, the jury debated long and hard to decide on the winners.