Patient Activation/Engagement

[John Sherber]

Good day to all,
I am of the belief there are very few avenues left to bring our HC system back to a place where we can benefit from it. If you look at the statistics worldwide there is a whole lot of people going to come to an age where they will need a lot more care than ever. Long Term Care, acute care, and UPCC's, Primary care are going to be challenged in a way that will exceed available resources. If we work with the system, educating ourselves on how to best meet our personal health concerns we become partners in our care.
The following speech was given twice so far. Once to a group (100) of Patient Flow members of the health authority. It was a planning session for the Influenza surge season that could (will) materialize this winter. (Let's wash our hands more!)
The other was to the medical staff of the HA. It was received well and I feel comfortable sharing it with all of you. I would like feedback about how you see "patient engagement" at this level. Enjoy.
John Sherber Patient Partner Victoria, BC
You will see a few items with ** beside them. You can search these. They are programs available on Vancouver Island that patients have access to.

Sept 23, 22 Patient Flow Meeting Nanaimo BC
5 min. from the patient partners perspective

Recently I read this in an article:
In Ont. a measure reduced LTC crowding but increased the Alternate Level Care waitlist.
As of May 2021, more than 38,000 patients were waiting for LTC, with a mean wait time of 171 days
There has never been a time in history that this has happened:
This is a PP’s look into HC:
As I read this overview to you, please consider how this could be integrated into your planning today

Health care is a service, not a product, a service is co-produced.
“nothing about me without me”.
Patients can be active agents in their health.
A team is a group of people that works together in a coordinated way, maximizing each team member’s strengths, to achieve a common goal.
Could this be patients & HC professionals?
"If you keep doing what you have always done, you will always get what you always got."
I am the "Altruist on the Move". Practical, Pragmatic, Idealistic
I work within systems to enhance the probabilities of positive outcomes.
Health underlies everything people do in daily life. Yet most people give little conscious thought to their health unless they are ill.
Heal a man and you heal him for a day, teach a man to care for himself and you offer him good health for a lifetime.

Do you know how much we look to you for direction?
You are powerful people who hold our lives in your hand.
We want to learn from you.
Patient engagement the “blockbuster drug of the century” (Kish, 2012), has the potential to achieve the “triple aim”
We create our own reality and walk into the picture we hold of the future.
Some ways to deal with patients and HC
Health Literacy
Patient Activation
Patient Engagement

Patient Experience
The best way to predict a future is to create it
What does a patient want their future to be?
For their children, grandchildren.
There is now an opportunity for patients to take the term "partners" to a higher level. If care is a partnership and a partnership is the meeting of equals what is the patient bringing to the relationship? Thanks Sandy
The pandemic brought communities together and raised awareness of the importance of following public health guidance and recommendations

When the patient becomes part of the team, families are integrated.
I believe the family can be part of the solution:
You are patients, we all are family

In my view, each of us decides what “family” means in the arena of his or her heart.
I was the POA for a gentleman whom I cared for 12 yrs. I was there as his family when he passed during Covid.
Can I be part of your team?
I activate in my way
I stand here today and my voice is being heard.
I can’t change anything only offer my thoughts

I ask not what health care can do for me.
What can I do to improve health care?
Engaging in Advanced Care Planning…. Yakimovich center, free programs

The PJ paralysis program gets the patient and families involved

Patrick McGowan at the Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health (IALH) offers FREE self-management programs that have been running for 30 years and there is no uptake of these programs.
The patient is the one to make the change, to adapt

NHS is shifting to a community model because of the impending increase in populations seeking care:
Their first shift is towards healthcare that understands a person’s context beyond the specific condition
The second shift is recognizing the individual as an active participant in their own health outcomes.
These shifts require a fundamentally different mindset and a set of practices for HC institutions and the professionals working within them
I would like to offer you this thought: E Nightingale
Your rewards in life are in direct proportion to your service, that is what you do every day, you are extraordinary!

Ask: When you are having the conversations today at your table how can you be inclusive of the patient in your solutions?
Can you create awareness around all your patients’ health solutions?

What do they want their future to be
for their children, Grandchildren

[Alies Maybee]

@John-Sherber thanks for sharing your talk. It is hard not to get discouraged these days, especially in Ontario. I think BC is at least making what seems to be positive strides with their change in compensation for primary care.