Happy New Year!

We hope you had joyful holidays and a great start to 2017, and that you are as excited for the coming year as we are!

We’ll be offering more learning and networking opportunities, continuing to seek and respond to feedback from our patient and health care partners (more on that below), and engaging our communities in how they can help make our health system better.

We’re also committed to sharing news and stories that we think you’ll find interesting. If you’re eager to find out more on how patient engagement is making health care better locally and around the world, and to learn about PVN news and volunteer opportunities as soon as they come up, make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Stay tuned: there’s a lot coming up this year!

Only Six Days Left to Fill Out Our Survey

Speaking of getting ready for the future, have you completed the PVN Consultation Survey yet? Our Oversight & Advisory Committee will guide the development of a three-year plan for PVN moving forward, and we need your help in determining the key priorities.

What are your thoughts on the future of PVN? What aspects of the network are most valuable to you? Please share your ideas with us by January 11 - It takes only 15-20 minutes to complete the survey, but the impact on PVN’s future will last for years to come!

Introducing PVN's New Evaluation Process

We strongly believe that feedback about our volunteer opportunities helps us provide meaningful experiences for our patient and health care partners. So from this month on, you will be invited to share your feedback for each volunteer experience via online surveys.

The new surveys are intended to check-in on how we can better support our patient and health care partners, in addition to evaluating outcomes and impacts. They will be sent directly to you during volunteer opportunities, as well as at the end of the opportunities.

If you would like to learn more about the PVN Evaluation Surveys, we’ve created a list of answers to questions you might have. Please feel free to also connect with your local engagement leader if you have any other questions!

A Patient Partner's Experience at the National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care

A few weeks ago, our patient partner Edwina Nearhood wrote a guest post for our blog about what she was looking forward to learning at the National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care. Edwina was very excited about attending the conference, and now, in this follow-up post, she tells us what her experience was like.

Among her key takeaways: learning about the importance of each role in the improvement process, a real feeling of the motto “Nothing about me without me”, and a notebook filled with inspiration and contacts.

Learning Opportunity: School for Change Agents

The UK’s National Health Service Horizons Group is offering a learning opportunity that may interest our patient and health care partners leading or supporting change in health care. The School for Change Agents is a free virtual learning program for change activists in health and social care, delivering learning sessions each week for five weeks, starting on February 16.

All the live sessions run from 7:00-8:30 PST on Thursdays via an online webinar, which is also recorded and made available for viewing later. Many people from outside the usual definition of health care will be joining in, including change agents from the police service, education and community activists.

Interested? Visit the official website to learn more about the project, topics and dates. We’ll see you there!

Article of Interest: A 12-Year-Old Girl Uses Her Medical Struggle to Help Others

This is truly an inspirational story that we want to share with you: After several years of complex medical care as a patient with Type 1 Diabetes and having received a kidney transplant, 12-year-old Wendy Wooden realized she could use her experience to help other families facing an Emergency Department visit.

So, with the help of her mom, she wrote a video narrative to help paediatric patients understand what to expect during an ER visit. Such a wonderful initiative! Watch the video.

Questions or Suggestions?

Your feedback is very important to us. What kinds of volunteer opportunities are you interested in? What else would you like to see in our newsletters?

Send us an email, phone 604.668.8240 or 1.877.282.1919, or connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

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