Shaping Safer Care Through Partnership

This year, World Patient Safety Day on September 17 focuses on safe care for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), under the slogan Safe care for life! The theme draws attention to the importance of safe, high-quality care for people who may have ongoing interactions with healthcare over many years or throughout their lives.

It is also an opportunity to recognize something that extends across healthcare: safe care is shaped by all of us.

For Heather Thiessen, a member of Healthcare Excellence Canada’s Board of Directors and a patient partner, that understanding has been shaped by years of lived experience. Heather lives with two chronic neurological conditions and has experienced multiple hospitalizations and ongoing interactions with the health system.

Heather remembers receiving care in a healthcare system that was largely system-centred, where patients and families were not routinely invited into conversations or decisions about their own care. For Heather, asking questions could be difficult and, over time, she learned to stay quiet.

A significant shift came with Saskatchewan’s 2009 Patient First Review, which called for a more patient and family-centred approach to care. For Heather, that change in philosophy opened the door to participating in conversations about her own health and well-being where she had not always felt welcome.

Heather has also experienced what it can mean when a care plan reflects what matters to the person receiving care. In one instance, she worked with her care team to develop and document a plan in advance of a potential medical emergency.

When a situation later arose, Heather was able to remind her care team about the plan and knew they were already prepared to follow it.

"All I could say was, 'Remember my plan.' They said, 'We are all ready and prepared.'"

For Heather, the experienced reinforced how partnership and communications work together to shape safer care. Creating a care plan together mattered, as did knowing that all the people caring for her understood it and were ready to act.

Creating the conditions for partnership

Making care safer is a shared responsibility.

For people receiving care and their care partners, that can include asking questions, sharing what matters to them and participating in decisions about their care in ways that feel right for them.

For people providing care, it can mean listening, communicating clearly and recognizing the knowledge and expertise that patients and care partners bring.

For healthcare leaders and organizations, it means creating the conditions where partnership, communication, coordination and learning are embedded in how care is designed and delivered.

Heather also emphasizes that meaningful partnership will not look the same for every person. Not everyone will want to participate in their care in the same way, and some people may not feel ready to do so.

"Some patients may not want to do this, but that offer must always be out there and the invitation always given. Someday they may feel brave enough to do this."

Heather has spent more than a decade bringing her lived experience to healthcare improvement as a patient partner at the local, provincial and national levels. She encourages healthcare organizations that may still be hesitant to involve patients and families to take that step.

An important part of that work for Heather has also been engaging with students across healthcare disciplines. Bringing lived experience into the education of future healthcare providers creates an opportunity for students to hear directly from patients and families as they develop their own approaches to care. For Heather, working with the next generation of healthcare providers is an important part of creating lasting change in the healthcare system.

For Heather, those opportunities for partnership can help shape a more inclusive healthcare experience for the people who come next.

This World Patient Safety Day, Heather’s story invites us to reflect on the conversations, decisions and conditions that make care safer. It is a question we will continue exploring during Canadian Patient Safety Week: What shapes safer care?

Learn more about World Patient Safety Day and how you can get involved.

About Heather Thiessen

Heather brings deep lived experience as a person living with two chronic conditions, along with more than a decade of experience as a patient partner at the local, regional, provincial, and national levels. Her healthcare journey, including multiple hospitalizations and ongoing interactions with the health system, continues to shape her commitment to ensuring patient and family voices are meaningfully included in healthcare improvement.

Heather has served as an embedded Patient Partner with Health Standards Organization and Accreditation Canada and was trained as one of Accreditation Canada’s first patient surveyors. She currently serves as a board member with Healthcare Excellence Canada and contributes to committee work with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

She is also involved in health professions education at the University of Saskatchewan and has received numerous awards and honours for her contributions to health system improvement and health sciences education.

At the heart of Heather’s work is a belief that patients and families should be valued, respected, and fully integrated into the future of healthcare.