Wyncel's thoughts on the Health Council of Canada’s Symposium on Patient Engagement

Wyncel of Port Coquitlam, BC, was one of three patient delegates to attend the Health Council of Canada’s Symposium on Patient Engagement on October 22. We invited her to blog about some thoughts and themes that resonated with her  following the event.

At the symposium, I felt a strong sense of partnership emerge between stakeholders. Following his lively presentation Tipping Point: My Journey to Becoming a Patient, Daniel Stolfi proclaimed, “We cannot get mad at each other because we have to work together.” Coming from a cancer patient who came close to dying due to an error in dosage, this rang very clear as a blunt but very true statement that we all must realize.

A major takeaway for me was that the patient/practitioner partnership needs a reframing. We are no longer just patients, but consumers. And the physicians are not above us but rather mediators to hear our voices and understand what matters to us, and more importantly help us through our various journeys as patients by continually following up with us.

This business approach has worked for so many companies (for example Apple – who has a detailed follow-up system for customers buying their products)  but it is not something engrained within the health care system. Yet we are clients and we do deserve the kind of quality control that happens after one buys an iPod. Research needs to be done to examine the patient’s experience, be it on their drive to the clinic, how they feel in the waiting room, the actual interaction with their doctor or their transition back into society.

Moreover, in the long run, the design of facilities and care that is quality care will cost the system, and the patient, less. Heather Fraser of Rotman Designworks and Business Design Initiative emphasized “co-creation”, a sense of ownership and engagement between stakeholders that will lead to valuable change through feedback and holistically looking at people’s experiences. Once again this just makes good sense to do. It keeps the system from draining resources and focusing on things that do not work, and instead expensing energy, money and time in the areas that matter most to the patient experience.

Lastly, following my individual breakout sessions, another theme emerged. Improvement is daunting, and changing societal expectations and interactions will be a long journey. Yet we need to start with what is working first and then see what makes these systems, actions, and patient experiences successful.

If we focus too much on what is not working, we will become overwhelmed and not appreciate the fact that there are pockets of success out there that are working and that we should follow by example. And for us the patients, it is important for us to be intentional. We must engage in a meaningful way and remember that we have a purpose in the big picture. We are not just using the system anymore but also there to help build it and make it better.