To our patient and health care partners, we wish you a safe and happy holiday season! We hope you all get a chance to rest and recharge, and spend time with those you love. We'll be back with another newsletter in the second week of January! 

It's been a busy year for the Patient Voices Network, and the BC Patient Safety & Quality Council is excited to share and celebrate PVN's work through the 2017/18 Annual Report! 

We're proud to have supported 426 patient partners in 235 engagements opportunities, grew the PVN network to 980 patient partners and strengthened our relationships with health care organizations across the province.

We sponsored patient partners to attend learning opportunities and created numerous resources to build capacity and advance person- and family-centred care across BC. 

"As a member of the Patient Voices Network, I'm delighted with the accomplishments we achieved last year. It has been a truly remarkable year, full of growth, passion, dedication and learning for both patient and health care partners." 

Pamela Jessen, Outgoing Co-Chair, PVN Oversight & Advisory Committee

Learn more about how we advanced PVN’s strategic goals by providing workshops on becoming change agents and storytellers, increased youth representation by partnering with the University of Victoria at Selkirk College, and supported partnering organizations through a project to visually map the perspectives and care experiences of Indigenous peoples with substance use concerns.

“Patient partners are the driving force behind the Patient Voices Network, and their insight, personal experiences and passion for person- and family-centred care is inspiring. The past year truly shows how much patient and health care partners can accomplish when they work together towards improved health care.”

Christina Krause, CEO, BC Patient Safety & Quality Council

We’d like to thank everyone who participated in engagement opportunities, followed our journey and supported our work. As always, we welcome your feedback and ideas as we look ahead into this year and those to come!

Read the report.

You may have seen it delivered to your inbox already — our survey on patient partner compensation was sent out this past week! We are looking for input from our patient and health care partners on this important topic by January 4, 2019. 

The BC Patient Safety & Quality Council has been asked by the Ministry of Health to engage with the PVN membership to inform a review of its policy on patient partner compensation. The ministry established its policy nearly 10 years ago and, since then, the landscape around this issue has changed as the scope and type of patient partner engagements have evolved.   

We're reaching out to patient and health care partners to arrange focus groups and interviews to gather more information. If you would like to be included at this stage of the process, please contact your Engagement Leader.

If you are participating in the next stages of this process and would like to deepen your knowledge about patient partner compensation, check out the best practices from other organizations throughout the province, across Canada and around the world. BC SUPPORT Unit, the Change Foundation in Ontario and the Saskatchewan Centre for Patient-Oriented Research are some of the organizations leading the way.

Thank you for taking the time to complete the survey! Your thoughts and experiences will help shape this policy review and we look forward to hearing your ideas. 

Fill in the patient partner survey or the health care partner survey.