Last month, we celebrated some of the amazing
accomplishments we and our partners achieved this year. While I was sharing
them, I thought about the lessons I learned. It is so easy to get wrapped up in
the daily routine of meetings, presentations, and planning that it can be hard
to stop and think about the progress we’ve made together.
We were incredibly excited about the successes we saw this
year with the Canadian Patient Safety Week. Not only did we roll out a program
that interested our primary audience of healthcare leaders and providers, but
we also engaged with the public in ways we never had before. Our tools for
medication safety were downloaded by people across the country and around the
world. By reaching outside the healthcare system, we spread the message of
medication and patient safety farther than ever.
The lesson here is not to be afraid to try something new. If
we hadn’t decided to engage with new audiences among the general public, we would
not have been able to spread our messages so far, let alone equip so many
people with tools they can use to keep themselves safer. CPSI has a strong
history of supplying our healthcare partners with patient safety messages and
tools – but we can make even more of a difference if we remember to try new
ways of reaching out to millions of Canadian patients and families out there
who need to know how to keep themselves safer in our healthcare system.
The second success we celebrated this year involved our
introduction of the first of four Safety Improvement Projects: Measuring and
Monitoring for Safety. The project is under way, with participating teams from
across Canada, and we will share some of their stories in an upcoming edition
of our Digital Magazine. The other three Safety Improvement Projects – Teamwork
& Communication, Medication Safety, and Enhanced Recovery After Surgery –
will launch next month, and we invite you to sign up here
to learn about them as soon as they are announced!
The lesson we learned at CPSI this year was to focus on what
we do best. We are a small and passionate group of people. With the support of our
partners, we have the daunting task to improve patient safety results for a
national healthcare system involving thousands of people across hundreds of
locations. When we focus on the expertise that is unique to our organization, we
can start making improvements to patient safety… right now!
Finally, we celebrated our partnership with Health Canada.
While we were very proud to help deliver a community engagement event in
Halifax on the implementation of national pharmacare, we are also working
closely with the other Pan-Canadian Healthcare Organizations (PCHOs) and health
ministries across the country to make patient safety a priority. I have met
with Ministers and Deputy Ministers of most of Canada’s provinces and
territories. I have discussed how to work with other healthcare organizations.
And I have made sure that each meeting concludes with a commitment to making
patient safety one of the most important elements of our healthcare system.
The lesson here is obvious, and probably the most important
one: if we work with our partners, we can achieve great things. By uniting with
Health Canada and regional health ministries, we can make sure that patient
safety becomes a priority across the country. By working with other PCHOs, we
can build synergies to achieve our goals together. By working with Patients for
Patient Safety Canada, other patient organizations, and Quality Improvement
groups across the country, we can help equip patients and their families to
take an active role in their healthcare experiences. All of these will be to
the overall improvement of our health and our healthcare system well into the
future.
Try new approaches. Focus on our strengths. Work together.
Learning these three lessons has been key to our plans for a successful 2019,
where we intend to make Canadian healthcare systems safer for all patients today,
tomorrow, and in the tomorrows to come. Happy holidays to you and yours, be
safe, and I’ll talk to you in the new year.
Questions? Comments? My inbox is open to you anytime at cpower@cpsi-icsp.ca, and you can follow
me on Twitter @ChrisPowerCPSI.
Yours in patient safety,
Chris Power