What have the 2023 Quality Award winners been up to?

Our annual Quality Awards program celebrates projects and individuals in BC who are improving health care quality. Winners are awarded a $2,500 sponsorship to help support and disseminate learning from their projects or to support ongoing learning and development. 

We’re checking in with our 2023 Quality Award winners to hear about how they used their sponsorships. Not surprisingly, they have by and large used the funding to continue their great work! Here’s what some of them shared with us.

The Indigenous Palliative Care Projects (IPCP)

The Indigenous Palliative Care Projects (IPCP) team won the Coping with Transition from Life award for their partnership to improve palliative care services for and with Indigenous Peoples in Vancouver Coastal Health’s Coastal Community of Care region. The partnership is between VCH’s North Shore Palliative Care team and Tsleil-Waututh Nation, a distinct Coast Salish First Nation community with a strong and growing population.

Sierra Roberts, Project Manager for the North Shore Palliative Care Program, says the walls of the palliative care unit at Lions Gate Hospital have become a canvas for storytelling because of their $2,500 sponsorship award.

“Our team has used the funds to showcase and share the learnings and knowledge from these projects in a display on the palliative care unit at Lions Gate Hospital,” says Sierra. “We used art as a powerful storyteller; this piece was created by Tsleil-Waututh Nation artist, Olivia George, to represent the smooth journey to join the ancestors in accordance with Nation knowledge and teachings.

“We are pleased about how many conversations this display has started and how many people, staff and the public, stop to read about this work. Thank you again sincerely for Health Quality BC’s support and recognition of this work.”

Roots to Read Newborn Literacy Program

The Roots to Read newborn literacy program at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital won the Optimizing the Early Years award. Roots to Read provides new parents with information and tools that will educate, equip and empower families to promote literacy and language development in their child, beginning at birth. Their $2,500 sponsorship was matched by the Nanaimo Community Foundation, with the resulting $5,000 used to purchase books for the program and to add to their base fund, to ensure sustainability. They also hope to grow the program further and, to that end, have presented to several community groups to provide education about the program, and encourage donation of volunteer expertise to help with fundraising and marketing. They also held a fundraising storytelling evening with renowned First Nations artist Roy Henry Vickers, a Roots to Read supporter who donated his time and two prints for auction. Roots to Read continues to be well received by new parents and is promoted by both local primary care clinics and public health, which reinforces the program as part of immunization visits at two, four, six and 12 months.

St. Paul’s Remote Cochlear Implant Program

The St. Paul’s Remote Cochlear Implant Program from Providence Health was winner of the Living with Illness or Disability award. The remote mapping service continues to successfully operate one day per month at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops and two days per month at Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria, supporting their distant patients. This not only lessens travel time and expenses for people to access follow-up appointments for device activation and programming at St. Paul’s, the only adult cochlear implant centre in BC, but also reduces environmental impact of that travel. Because of this work, the St. Paul’s program is viewed by the cochlear implant community as the most established remote mapping program in Canada. They’ve had more than 100 remote mapping service appointments to date, and now are looking to expand the program beyond patients with Cochlear America’s devices to also include people with Medel manufactured devices. They anticipate their sponsorship award will help with this expansion in the coming months.

The Virtual Interpreter

The Virtual Interpreter, which offers on-demand, live medical interpreters through a wi-fi enabled tablet, was the Returning to Health and Wellness winner. The Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) team has been busy expanding the Virtual Interpreter program beyond its availability in acute, primary care and ambulatory care locations, adding all long-term care sites and home support teams. They are also conducting a pilot project with home health teams. Once completed, this work will significantly expand access to the Virtual Interpreter for clinicians at VCH and improve the quality of care provided for patients with limited English proficiency. The team is exploring two avenues for their $2,500 sponsorship funds: an open house to promote the Virtual Interpreter’s use, and the purchase of additional devices to allow programs to trial the service and see the benefits it can have for patients.