Laurie Edmundson has worked tirelessly to advance the patient voice to help improve health care services, both across BC and internationally. Because of her vulnerability and willingness to share her own story about navigating borderline personality disorder and other mental health challenges, she has inspired others and helped shape the way services are delivered.
Through the Indigenous Palliative Care Projects, Tsleil-Waututh Nation and Vancouver Coastal Health identified gaps, barriers and priorities to improving palliative care services. With this information in hand, they set a plan in motion to integrate VCH and Tsleil-Waututh Nation resources so that individuals are fully supported in their final journey.
Viva Swanson’s work has significantly improved how people are cared for in BC’s northeastern communities, which are among the most culturally diverse and remote in the province, with residents facing daily challenges accessing health care.
Michel has been an outspoken advocate for including the patient voice in health care since volunteering with the Patient Voices Network in 2008. Over the years, she has added her insights to many initiatives, particularly Fraser Health’s Physician Quality Improvement program, originally as a patient advisor for individual projects and then as a PQI Steering Committee member, enabling her to add the voice of the patient to decisions affecting quality improvement throughout the health authority.
Roots to Read is a program that educates, equips and empowers families in Nanaimo with information and tools to promote literacy and language development in their child, beginning at birth – because the way families interact with their children from the moment they are born matters immensely to how they develop language and interact socially.
The Virtual Interpreter provides on-demand, live medical interpreters through a wi-fi enabled tablet in care locations across the health authority. It has led to better care decisions and outcomes for patients who have benefited from its use.
The COVID-19 Rapid Response Team is a robust suite of provincial health services, staffed by 824 registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, contact tracers, data entry clerks, operations staff, and clinical and non-clinical leaders. It supported the entire province by providing key critical COVID-19 services, ensuring the availability and accessibility of care across BC when it was needed most.
The Real-Time Virtual Support Network is a team-based, wrap-around service that links rural health care providers and patients to virtual physicians, psychiatrists, mental health clinicians, care coordinators and specialists via Zoom videoconferencing or telephone. It also offers multiple ways for patients and providers to access culturally safe care and support.
The Remote Cochlear Implant Program at St. Paul’s Hospital enables implant recipients to undergo mapping of the device through a virtual platform. It means patients outside of Greater Vancouver either no longer need to leave their home community for follow-up visits, or have a closer health care centre for their appointments
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We would like to acknowledge that we are living and working with humility and respect on the traditional territories of the First Nations peoples of British Columbia.
We specifically acknowledge and express our gratitude to the keepers of the lands of the ancestral and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, where our main office is located.
We also recognize Métis people and Métis Chartered Communities, as well as the Inuit and urban Indigenous peoples living across the province on various traditional territories.