Canadian Alliance for Patient Safety 

Alliance Member Patient Safety Achievements - Celebration of 2024 

Members of the Canadian Alliance for Patient Safety are involved in a range of patient safety initiatives, all aimed at making Canadian healthcare safe for all Canadians while supporting and clarifying the role of patients in their own care.  

Kim Neudorf, Patient Partner, SHA and Felicia Watson, SHA shared that the Saskatchewan Health Authority’s Patient Safety Executive Council/committee led by the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health did a review of critical incident management with the goal of revising the Incident Management documents. The intent was for this to be a collaborative approach involving patient partners in the process. Psychological and spiritual harm were added as forms of healthcare harm to broaden the view of harm beyond physical harm. There was also an inclusion of ‘suicide while in care’. This review process followed the Saskatchewan Health Authority’s Auditor General’s report about incident management. The critical incident management guidelines have now been released.  

Serena Thompson, Patient Partner Advocating for Patients with Sickle Cell Disease has been doing education about Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) through mini huddles with Emergency Department nurses and newly hired staff to advocate for the needs of people with Sickle Cell Disease. These patients need to be seen quickly (within 30 mins) as they require high doses of narcotics to manage long term pain. Their needs are sometimes misunderstood as unsafe use of opioids, despite that it is uncommon (less than 2 %) for SCD patients to be dependent on opioids. There is a lack of recognition of the changing medication needs of people with Sickle Cell Disease. This can lead to a lack of service for these patients to the point of increased mortality, especially during the transition from pediatric care to adult healthcare. When this education is done, there is an increase in the number of patients seen within 30 minutes. Serena stressed the need to keep up the education of front-line healthcare staff about the needs of patients with SCD. https://sicklecelldiseasecanada.com

Mollie Cole, HQCA shared that The Health Quality Council of Alberta is doing a public information campaign to raise awareness among seniors and caregivers to be prepared to partner with their healthcare providers; HQCA resources have been viewed 30,000 times over the last two years and are now translating resources into several languages. www.Hqca.ca/info  

Linda Moss, Patient Partner, Wounds Canada shared that for pressure injury prevention, communications is most important. Care plans need to be shared with caregivers & family not just the patient to ensure that pressure injuries are prevented. Linda Moss was a panelist on the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO) webinar on new guidelines for pressure injury prevention. Recently Linda was interviewed on the Savvy Seniors (Your TV- Halton Show) discussing the importance of care providers in pressure injury prevention. 

Dallas Smith from Health Quality BC (HQBC) shared that the major focus of HQBC is to operationalize their Patient Safety Strategic plan and more details will be available in early 2025. https://healthqualitybc.ca/resources/strategic-plan-2023-2026/  

Melissa Sheldrick, Patient Partner, ISMP Canada and Carolyn Hoffman, ISMP Canada shared that the Canadian Medication Safety Network completed 3 very successful webinars this year. They also noted that the updated ‘Best Possible Medication History Guide’ is now available. This is a document to provide structure to conversations between patients and their healthcare providers. Finally, consumer medication error reports are collected through www.mederror.ca and learning is shared back to consumers via newsletters to prevent these errors from recurring. https://safemedicationuse.ca/newsletter/index.html   

ISMP Webinar Slide

Carol Fancott from Healthcare Excellence Canada (HEC) shared that the theme for Canadian Patient Safety Week (CPSW) 2024, was ‘Broadening our Understanding of Healthcare Harm’ and was highlighted in several webinars during CPSW Webinar series: Broadening our understanding of harm, together . HEC will be doing work about Incident Management to align with the broad definition of harm in the ‘Rethinking Patient Safety’ documents. This will be through a policy and practice lens, to re-imagine what the Incident Management process could look like. https://www.healthcareexcellence.ca/en/resources/rethinking-patient-safety

Theresa Malloy-Miller, Patient Partner from Patients for Patient Safety Canada (PFPSC) shared that PFPSC is designing a workshop to pilot in early 2025 to provide motivation and resources for a patient-centred response to patient safety incidents and improve patient safety. This workshop will be based on lived experience and evidence leading to tangible actions for immediate use. This workshop will be for patient partners/ advisors, as well as staff responsible for incident management (IM). Thank you for supporting PFPSC during this year as PFPSC was established as a not-for-profit, patient led, safety focused, volunteer-based organization. https://www.patients4safety.ca