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Patient Partnering

Get Started Working with Patient Advisors

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Choosing Methods for Patient Engagement

There are many methods for engagement. Use this decision-making-guide to help you identify when, why and how to use each engagement method.

Download the decision-making-guide

Source: Health Quality Ontario


Creating and Sustaining Patient and Family Advisory Councils – Choosing Meaningful Projects

Read this guide to learn how to determine and prioritize projects or areas of focus for patient and family advisory councils. Use the guide’s examples, templates and other resources to support your practice.

Learn how to determine and prioritize projects

Source: Health Quality Ontario


Chairing Meetings with Patient and Caregiver Advisors

Use this best practice checklist to help you chair meetings in ways that make patient and caregiver advisors feel meaningfully engaged and supported.

Download the best practice checklist

Source: Health Quality Ontario


Orienting Patient and Caregiver Advisors on Health Care Acronyms

Share this list of acronyms and their meanings with the advisors you work with. Encourage them to use it to support their engagement activities.

Download the list of common health care acronyms and their meanings

Source: Health Quality Ontario


Learn How to Embed Patient Engagement in All Your Quality Improvement Initiatives

This Guide, which was co-written with patient advisors, connects key steps in the quality improvement process with recommended actions, tips and tools to optimize patient engagement, and includes a specific focus on Quality Improvement Plans. The Guide is written for both providers and patients involved in quality improvement.

Download the guide

Source: Health Quality Ontario


Engaging Patients and Caregivers About Your Patient Relations Process: A Guide for Hospitals

Learn how hospitals can improve patient relations efforts by engaging patients, families and caregivers, and how this leads, to better outcomes and improved patient experience.

Learn how to engage patients and caregivers in your patient relations process

Source: Health Quality Ontario


Creating and Sustaining Patient and Family Advisory Councils – Creating an Effective Terms of Reference

Read this guide to learn how to create an effective terms of reference that outlines how the council agrees to work together to accomplish common goals. Use the guide’s templates and tools to support your practice.

Learn how to create an effective terms of reference

Source: Health Quality Ontario


Supporting Patients and Caregivers to Share Their Stories

Use this best practice checklist to support patients and caregivers to recount their health care stories while making them feel safe and informed.

Download the best practice checklist

Source: Health Quality Ontario


Supporting Your Home’s Residents’ Council: A Resource Guide for Residents’ Council Leadership and Staff Assistants

Gain a sense of the theory and history of Residents’ Councils in long-term care homes – where residents receive care, and it is also their home – and learn how to make the Residents’ Council most effective

Read a resource guide for residents' council leadership and staff assistants

Source: Ontario Association of Residents’ Councils


Prepare Your Organization to Engage with Patients and Caregivers

Discover the core principles of building a strong and sustainable engagement program (specifically a patient advisory program) and how to build the case for patient engagement within your organization.

Learn how to prepare your organization to engage with patients and caregivers

Source: Alberta Health Services


Co-Designing Engagement Activities with Patients and Caregivers

Collaboration between health care providers and patients is an important part of designing effective engagement activities. Read this guide to learn how to share leadership and “co-design” engagement activities with patients and their caregivers.

Learn how to partner with patients and their caregivers

Source: The King's Fund


Understanding the Needs of Patient and Family Advisors

Find out what needs to be considered when working with patients and family advisors using the five-step strategy for implementing effective engagement.

Read about the implementation handbook

Source: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality


Considering Whether to Pay Patient Engagement Participants

Use this question-and-answer tool to help consider whether patients and family advisors should be financially compensated for their time and incurred expenses, and learn more about the kinds of barriers participants face when participating in engagement activities.

Use question-and-answer tool

Source: The Change Foundation


Connect with Colleagues who are Engaging Patients and Caregivers

Collaborate with a network of leaders from organizations actively involved in patient engagement work. Ask questions and learn from their experiences in a variety of health settings.

Learn how to connect with colleagues who are engaging patients and caregivers

Source: Institute for Patient- and Family-Centered Care (U.S.)


Applying Patient Engagement Principles and Practices – A Toolkit

Use this toolkit to help design engagement projects, from start to finish. The toolkit helps users to build the case for engagement within their organization, identifying topics and issues to start with, and choosing engagement methods. The toolkit was developed for health care settings in PEI, but can be applied to other health care settings.

Download the toolkit

Source: Health PEI


Better Together: Partnering with Families Campaign

Use these tools and resources to understand how to begin building a culture that embraces, and is supportive of, family and caregiver engagement across health care sectors, and levels of care.

Learn more about partnering with families campaign

Source: Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement


Considering Patient and Family Advisory Councils

Learn how to create a Patient and Family Advisory Council and understand elements like defining the purpose, benefits and opportunities, and set guidelines for membership, orientation and rules of engagement.

Learn how to create patient and family advisory council

Source: The Institute for Patient- and Family Centered Care

Let’s make our health system healthier

Join Our Patient, Family and Public Advisors Program

Patients, families and the public are central to improving health quality.


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