​​​Archive: Thursday April 6, 2017

Patient engagement is viewed by many to be a critical component of achieving safe healthcare. The question becomes how best to engage all patients - the public - in the effort towards increasing safer healthcare practices. Other prevention efforts have effectively engaged the public in achieving significant cultural shifts in attitudes and actions. The campaign to decrease smoking is one such example. For instance, anti-smoking efforts have made it unacceptable to smoke with your children in the car. The efforts toward increasing patient safety could benefit from the lessons learned in the anti-smoking campaigns.

There is much to be learned.

Resources

Objective: At the end of this interactive session, participants will leave with at least one practical idea to engage the public in making healthcare safer.

• How have anti-smoking efforts effectively achieved a cultural shift in attitudes and actions towards tobacco? 
• Which are the key patient safety messages most important for wide spread public engagement and would most help the public to be ready to take on a role in patient safety?
• Which strategies would make patient safety messages most visible and would provide the public with information about patient safety?

Speakers, moderator and participants:

1. Les Hagen is the executive director of Action on Smoking & Health which is Western Canada's leading tobacco control organization.  For over 25 years, Les has provided provincial and national leadership in tobacco control and prevention.  Les is a strong believer in community engagement and healthy public policy. He will provide a history of anti-tobacco advocacy, including:
• How a significant public shift was achieved relative to attitudes and actions related to tobacco use.
• Which strategies worked best to engage the public in decreasing use of tobacco.
• Which strategies were not effective.

2. Theresa Malloy-Miller - Patient Champion, Patients for Patient Safety Canada will moderate the dialogue among the participants to apply lessons learned from anti-smoking advocacy to patient safety.

3. All participants will be asked to add their ideas about key patient safety messages for public engagement and how best to apply anti-smoking strategies to the field of patient safety.

Designed by patient/family champions for champions this interactive webinar is offered by Patients for Patient Safety Canada. For this session the term patient safety champion includes any individual that volunteers as a patient/family representative in programs, groups, networks and/or organizations working to improve quality and safety in healthcare. The session is designed to allow for conversation among participants, so be prepared to contribute to the dialogue verbally or via chat. The slides, recording and related resources will be publicly available after the session here.

For more information contact patients@cpsi-icsp.ca.