Long-term Care

What are you doing on Tuesday, May 28th at 11am MT? If you have an interest in long-term care and hearing the experiences of residents and family members, this is something that may be on interest to you. Details about the webinar can be found here.

Developing an Osteoarthritis Tool for Patients – Get Involved


The College of Family Physicians of Canada and the Centre for Effective Practice, in partnership with the Arthritis Alliance of Canada (AAC), developed the Osteoarthritis (OA) Tool A that helps family physicians work with patients who have suspected, new or established osteoarthritis of the hands, knees and/or hips. Related to this family physician tool, a new working group of the AAC is developing a patient version. To find out more about this patient tool and how you can get involved in its development, click here.

Connecting Through Conversation

For many individuals, their goal is quality of life rather than medically extended longevity.  This is especially true for frail seniors.  Unfortunately, there can be a disconnect between what the senior desires, the actions taken and ultimately the healthcare provided.  As a means of addressing this disconnect, a new study is being conducted in Canada that aims to evaluate ways to improve care planning conversations.  As Dr. John You, project lead for the project states, “Advance care planning can have a significant impact on the patient experience and the family experience….They deserve to have their voices heard.”​  Click here to read more about this study.

Updates on Family Presence Work

Hello Pts4Chg Community!

Over the last four months the materials for patients and families as partners and advisors have been refined a wee bit and are also now translated into French. Our small ‘collation of the willing’ (volunteer citizens, patient and family advisors and CFHI) also thought it important to also create a survey to help improve the materials upon use. I know that many of you provided feedback already (which I still have) and some of that has made it into the current version. Much of it has not though, as we needed to find a way to capture input that would likely also come in nationally. So please complete the two short surveys if you have time, so that your impressions on the info can be included when next edits are made, likely well into 2017.

If you are active on Twitter, here are some suggested hashtags for the overall Better Together campaign too, that this is part of, if you are tweeting this info out.

  • #MoreThanAVisitor
  • #Cdnhealth
  • #shoulder2shoulder
  • #familypresence

These two documents are designed to support the movement for Family Presence in healthcare.

1. The first document, Partner Tips, is intended to be used by patients and families at the point of care (e.g. at the bedside, in an office or clinic).

2. The second document, Conversation Tips, is intended to be a resource for patients and families in conversations with healthcare providers, or organizations, or communities.

Please feel free to download, copy, distribute and use these documents. You will need Adobe Reader on your device. You are welcome to adapt them to meet your local team’s needs.

These tips sheets are also available in French: http://www.fcass-cfhi.ca/WhatWeDo/better-together/resources

Want to have your say and Be part of the pilot for these documents!?

The volunteers with ‘IMAGINE CITIZENS Collaborating for Health’ would appreciate your feedback and comments about these two documents. Please click these links to complete the two surveys about each document:

1. “Partner” Tips Survey and
2. “Conversation” Tips Survey.

Comments received will be reviewed by IMAGINE CITIZENS’ volunteers so that any significant edits can be incorporated. New versions will be available periodically, every six months or so, through the partner organizations.

Thank you for your help!

Troy Stooke
volunteer
IMAGINE: Citizens Collaborating for Health & Member of Pts4Chg community

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who joined us in the Fishbowl last night. What a great time and and an interesting conversation! Special thanks to our fish – Debbie, Mike, Aaron, Sandi, Philip, Terry, Jane and Kristina. You were super! Thanks also to Richard. Your efforts in bringing this event about were not overlooked and were much appreciated. Thanks so much! Tracyweb-fish-thank-you-front