E4 - Your Healthcare Journey with Us – A Patient and Clinic partnership to better understand and manage our relationships with one another

4. Patient and family-centred care

  • Date: Friday, September 20, 2019
  • Concurrent Session E
  • Time: 11:00am–11:45am

  • Room: Harbour C
  • Style: Presentation (information provided to audience, with opportunity for audience to ask question)
  • Focus: Balance between both (e.g. Presentation of a best-practice guideline that combines research evidence, policy issues and practical steps for implementation)
  • Target Audience: Leadership (ED, clinical lead, board chair, board member, etc.), Clinical providers, Administrative staff

Learning Objectives

  • How to start a Patient Advisory Committee,
  • How to engage the Committee on a focused task,
  • Learning from patients regarding inclusive and supportive communications,
  • How to work with patients and support staff in an environment of escalating harassment and potential violence in the workplace 
  • Creating mutual understanding of expectations and behaviour to improve operations 

Summary/Abstract

Working with our Patient Advisory Committee, McMaster Family Health Team created a communication tool to assist patients, families, clinic staff and healthcare providers in understanding how we hope to engage with one another.  Patients provided invaluable insight into what their expectations were and what language resonated with them in such communications.  An equal number of staff and clinicians from the FHT brought their perspectives to the table.  The result of this collaboration is a unique communication strategy that outlines what a successful relationship looks like, who to contact when things do not go as expected and what challenges may be experienced that would lead us to ending our care relationship. In providing the tool in a variety of formats (brochure, poster, slides, website, social media) we use it as a conversation starter with new patients, a clarification tool for current patients, and as a basis for re-framing our relationships when things are not going as well as hoped.  Further to this, an extension of our Violence in the Workplace policy was created providing clear steps for patients and clinicians to understand the varying levels of escalation that may lead to termination of a care relationship.
 

Presenter

  • Jill Berridge, coExecutive Director MFHT, McMaster Family Health Team
  • Marianne Hannon, Administrative Coordinator, McMaster Family Health Team
  • Neil Johnston, Patient Advisor, McMaster Family Health Team
  • Robert Stephen and Mona Shaw, Patient Presenters

Authors/Contributors

  • Kathy DeCaire, coExecutive Director MFHT    
  • Dr Dale Guenter, Family Physician, MFHT    Dr Heather Waters, Family Physician MFHT    
  • 5 other patient advisors who for privacy reasons will remain anonymous