Hi Everyone,
Recently the Kingston Whig Standard published a story about one of our patients. The patient spent a week here undergoing several complex procedures. Three days into his stay he confronted one of our nurses. "What's going on around here? Every single person I've met has been respectful, friendly, worried about my pain, and cared about my opinion. There have been no exceptions. It didn't matter if it was a nurse, surgeon or porter." The nurse didn't hesitate to answer. "It's patient-centred care," she said. "It's transforming the hospital."
Situations like this are becoming more common-they're confirmation that everyone's efforts to incorporate patient-centred care are truly making a difference to patients and to the culture of our hospital.
When UHN began its efforts to incorporate patient-centred care (PCC), we set a challenging goal for ourselves-to increase our patient satisfaction scores by 2 per cent each year. We continue to work to meet that challenge and are maintaining improved patient satisfaction scores. We know we've made the shift because patients are noticing, commenting and we're starting to receive external recognition.
PCC Education
It has now been four years since University Health Network first began implementing our patient-centred care strategy. So far, we've had 1000 graduates from PCC training courses with 650 graduates coming from a comprehensive education course. We know there is great interest in the PCC comprehensive courses from staff and we are working to try to increase access to these courses. In addition, we are now moving forward with a formal plan to take one unit and provide comprehensive PCC education for the interprofessional team and test our education strategy and its correlation to patient satisfaction scores.
Exciting PCC Initiative
Another exciting PCC initiative involves a duo of advanced practice nurses who are now working with teams and patients in the emergency departments at both TGH and TWH. The two staff are on-hand to support staff in learning PCC approaches and to help patients participate in their care in a meaningful way.
Making patient-centred care a part of our daily practice at UHN will be an ongoing process, but I can't emphasize enough how important it is that we continue to make it a priority for UHN. It is the foundation on which all our other goals are built-whether in clinical care, education or research.
Thank you to everyone for taking the time to learn more about patient-centred care and your ongoing commitment to improving the experience for patients and families at UHN. For more information, please visit the intranet homepage (a PCC link is on the left sidebar) or contact PCC committee leaders Mary Ferguson-Paré or Petrina McGrath.
Bob
