Archives: Feature Stories

Stories news and reviews

The HQCA helps validate findings in new compassion study

We are proud to play a role in a new study published in the online journal, BMC Emergency Medicine, that identifies compassion as the greatest predictor of patients’ overall quality ratings, surpassing other traditional factors such as wait times, clinical communication, and pain and symptom management.

The HQCA in partnership with University of Calgary Nursing professor and director of the Compassion Research Lab Dr. Shane Sinclair, PhD, and Innovate Calgary, completed a large study measuring the impact of compassion in the 14 busiest provincial emergency departments.

Compassion was measured using the SCQ (Sinclair Compassion Questionnaire), a valid and reliable tool developed by Sinclair and his team which includes University of Calgary Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts doctoral candidate Harrison Boss, and Dr. Cara MacInnis, adjunct associate professor, University of Calgary and professor, Acadia University.

The study participants were surveyed shortly after being discharged from the ED where 50 per cent of them went home and 50 per cent were admitted to hospital. They all completed a version of the Emergency Department Patient Experience of Care survey by the HQCA along with 15 additional questions from the SCQ.

“This work has not only advanced our understanding of compassion but also affirmed it as a key indicator of health service quality and people-centred care,” says Markus Lahtinen, HQCA’s senior director of health system analytics. 

“Measuring compassion fosters a more empathetic and supportive environment, which can enhance the overall quality of care provided. As well, quantifying compassion helps identify areas for improvement, ensuring that health-care professionals maintain high standards of patient interaction and emotional support.”

Part of the HQCA’s mandate is to assess and report on patient-reported experiences with healthcare services in Alberta, for the purposes of quality improvement. Going forward, our survey tools will now include, where appropriate, the Sinclair compassion questions as an important measure of patient experience, a critical aspect of our overall assessment of healthcare quality in Alberta.

Why should your clinic conduct a patient experience survey?

We asked this question to Dr. Maria J. Santana, a health services researcher, Associate Professor in the departments of Pediatrics and Community Health Sciences at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary. She is the provincial director, Patient Engagement for the Alberta Strategy for Patient-oriented Research.

Here’s what she had to say:

“To provide personalized care, patients should receive care that is important to them – that addresses their values, needs and preferences. This patient-centred care model needs to be measured; as what we don’t measure, we can’t change. To do so, healthcare systems need valid and reliable measures to understand what matters to patients, this includes patient experience measures.”

“The HQCA’s Primary Care Patient Experience Survey is a valid, evidence-based, and patient-informed measurement tool. The implementation of HQCA’s survey in primary care will benefit not only quality improvement activities but will also allow care providers to be able to respond to what matters most to patients.”

“It’s important to highlight the support that the HQCA provides in administering this survey in primary care across Alberta, minimizing the time and resources primary care clinics needs to do this critical work.”

For more information about the Primary Care Patient Experience Survey and details on how to get started at your clinic…
Visit Surveying Patients About Primary Care Experience or email surveys@hqca.ca.

2024 Patient Experience Award winners support patients through different life and health challenges

Four teams are being recognized today by the Health Quality Council of Alberta for improving the patient and family experience across a range of services – including kidney disease, recovery from addiction, and women’s reproductive health.

“This year’s recipients are an exceptional group of providers who have shown a commitment to continually improving patient and family experiences,” notes Medgine Mathurin, Chair of the HQCA’s Patient and Family Advisory Committee and a judge of the awards. “We believe they can inspire others in the healthcare system.”

The Patient Experience Awards program was established by the HQCA and its Patient and Family Advisory Committee in 2015 to recognize and spread knowledge about initiatives that improve the patient’s overall experience in accessing or receiving healthcare services. Aspects of patient experience include relationships, and how patients and families are treated; delivery of services to be person-centred, safe, timely, and effective; planning of services, such that patients and families are treated as partners; and a clean, safe, and inviting physical environment that supports healing and the efficient delivery of services.

Submissions are evaluated in a rigorous two-part process in which applicants describe the challenge they were trying to solve, their solution and how they identified it, the impact it has had, and the degree to which their solution can be scaled up and spread to others.

“We’re not looking at what kind of service they provide per se, or to whom, but rather how and where they provide it such that it demonstrates a measurably better experience for patients,” explains Charlene McBrien-Morrison, Chief Executive Officer of the HQCA. “In that sense, these teams can provide a model for others that may be serving an entirely different patient population.”

Read about the 2024 recipients here.

2023 Patient Experience Award recipients support Albertans through different life stages and health challenges

June 27, 2023

Today, the Health Quality Council of Alberta honours healthcare organizations and professionals for improving the patient and family experience across a range of services – from neonatal intensive care through enhancing quality of life for people with incurable cancer.

“This year’s recipients are an exceptional group of providers that have shown a commitment to continually improving patient and family experiences,” notes Sue Peters, Chair of the HQCA’s Patient and Family Advisory Committee and a member of the final selection panel. “Whether it’s caring for preterm infants or children with feeding disorders, assisting Indigenous Peoples in navigating complex health systems, or improving support to people with advanced cancer, these programs are inspirational.”

“Particularly when you consider the pressures on the healthcare system, each of these initiatives deserves to be celebrated as examples for others,” adds Charlene McBrien-Morrison, Chief Executive Officer of the HQCA.

Read about the 2023 recipients here.

Read our news release.

HQCA announces new Board Chair

We are pleased to announce Jacquelyn Colville has been appointed as the new Board Chair for the Health Quality Council of Alberta (HQCA), effective May 21, 2023.

Jacquelyn Colville was first appointed to the HQCA Board in April 2021. She previously served as an external member of the board from 2017 to 2021, and was the Chair of the Audit & Finance Committee. She is an experienced executive and also a leader in the community, having served on a number of boards working to improve the health and well-being of Albertans. Ms. Colville holds the ICD.D designation and is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA, CA).

The HQCA looks forward to continuing to work with Ms. Colville, as she supports our mandate to improve patient safety, person-centred care, and health service quality across the province.

A sincere thank you to Brent Windwick, who has served on the HQCA Board as Chair since January 2020.

Learn more about Ms. Colville and the rest of the HQCA Board of Directors.

2023 Primary Healthcare Panel Reports Now Available

The 2023 reports are available today for primary care providers across Alberta. This free report provides measures on continuity of care, screening of chronic conditions, mental health conditions, virtual care appointments, and more – so physicians can reflect on their practice and compare with colleagues.

Primary Healthcare Panel Reports have been offered for more than a decade now. The HQCA develops them in partnership with Alberta Health, Alberta Health Services, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, the Alberta Medical Association, the University of Alberta, the University of Calgary, the Physician Learning Program, Primary Care Networks, and the HQCA Patient and Family Advisory Committee.

To access your report…
If you have already requested your report, you can access it via an email from the HQCA; or if you know the type of report you have – please visit this page and click on the corresponding link.

To request a report…
If you are a primary care provider and would like to learn more about requesting a Primary Healthcare Panel Report from the HQCA, please download this guide for more information. And remember, developing an action plan and implementing change based on the data in your panel report counts as a practice-driven quality improvement activity with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta’s (CPSA) Physician Practice Improvement Program (PPIP). Visit the CPSA website to find out more.

Write it out to save a life!

Mollie Cole is Director of Health System Improvement at the Health Quality Council of Alberta, and a registered nurse of many years.

Healthcare provider in front of white board with medical abbreviations and symbols crossed out. Text: Write it out to save a life!

As a registered nurse, I have encountered my fair share of abbreviations, symbols, and dose designations over the years. I’ve seen these used in treatment orders, prescriptions, medication administration records, care plans, clinical notes, and instructions to patients. I’m sure I was responsible for a few of these too. After all, some habits are hard to break without an occasional reminder.

That’s why, on behalf of the Health Quality Council of Alberta, I am pleased to share with you a few helpful tips and important reminders about the hazards of abbreviations, symbols, and dose designations in medical communications – and why it’s best to avoid them.

While it’s difficult to estimate the impact of this problem across Alberta, it’s not hard to find alarming studies that point to the danger of abbreviations, symbols, and dose designations in healthcare settings across the world.

One U.S. study of 30,000 medication errors, some fatal, showed five per cent were linked to abbreviations in notes.1

As many of you in the healthcare sector already know communication shorthand commonly cause medication errors and adverse events. They can lead to the misinterpretation of instructions, especially if the language has multiple meanings or is not understood by all members of a healthcare team. And while the advent of electronic medical records and order sets have likely helped to mitigate abbreviation, symbols. and dose designations use in recent years, we know from audits that abbreviations in SMS texting are increasingly being found.

The Health Quality Council of Alberta has a mandate to promote and improve patient safety, person-centred care, and health service quality, and we’ve taken a keen interest in medication safety issues over the years such as the appropriate use of abbreviations, symbols, and dose designations.

This month, we launched a new page on our website, The Hazards of Abbreviations, Symbols, and Dose Designations, that highlights efforts healthcare providers and organizations can take to reduce the temptation to use shorthand in medical communications. This page replaces our abbreviations.hqca.ca site with a concise, updated look at this important topic.

One of the valuable resources you’ll find on our new webpage is a link to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada (ISMP Canada) Do Not Use List – which is a regularly updated list of abbreviations and symbols that frequently create problems in medical communication and should never be used.

“The list is based on reports of medication errors to ISMP Canada,” said Carolyn Hoffman, CEO, ISMP Canada. “Through practitioner and consumer-lived experiences, we learn and share so that all of us can act to reduce the risk of this type of preventable harm.”

To learn more about this important topic, check out the new Hazards of Abbreviations, Symbols, and Dose Designations page.

HQCA Matters is published intermittently and presents HQCA representative perspectives on topics or issues relevant to healthcare in Alberta.

1 BBC NEWS | Health | Medical abbreviations ‘pose risk’

HQCA will lead review of EMS response to dog attack

At the request of Alberta Health Services (AHS), pursuant to section 15 (2) of the Health Quality Council of Alberta Act, the HQCA will conduct an independent review of the EMS response to the June 5 dog attack in Calgary.

The announcement from AHS is available here: News Releases | Alberta Health Services

The advancement of patient safety relies on a just culture

In 2017, a patient died after a medication error at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the United States. We extend our sympathies to the family who suffered this tragic loss. Many healthcare professionals watched the case carefully, as the nurse who administered the wrong medication was criminally charged.

Our view

Criminalization of a medical error diverts attention from important aspects of patient safety that support our health systems to learn and improve.

No one is more equipped to make improvements to patient safety than healthcare workers, and the patients and families they serve. Healthcare workers are at the frontline delivering and witnessing care. As a result, they are in a unique position to identify potential and actual errors. They rely on safe venues to discuss unsafe situations, and require a healthcare system that is committed to acting on their findings. When we focus on individual blame and punishment, this can create a culture of fear that shuts down transparency and fosters an environment where healthcare workers no longer feel safe to voluntarily report potential and actual errors. This ultimately makes our health systems less safe.

A just culture

Organizations with a just culture see errors as opportunities to learn and to improve the healthcare system. Healthcare workers in a just culture trust their organization and feel that staff are treated fairly when they are involved in a patient safety event, including when they make an error. Reports of errors and patient safety hazards are important sources of information about weaknesses in the system, and are used to improve patient safety.

It is vital to promoting and improving patient safety that, as healthcare leaders, we ensure our organizations have a consistent, systematic and fair approach for gathering, organizing, and interpreting information about patient safety incidents and the actions taken by those involved. This begins with a thorough assessment of an incident using a systems-based approach that supports looking beyond the contribution of the individuals involved, and considers how complex interacting elements can influence care.

Tools such as the Just Individual Assessment (JIA) support a just culture and can be used to assess individual accountability within the context of the situation, including understanding contributing system factors.

The Health Quality Council of Alberta has created recommendations on what patients and families, healthcare workers, and organizations can do to foster a just culture. Now, more than ever, we need to commit to a just culture and we invite you to join us. Please check out our just culture website and the many resources available on this important topic.

Charlene McBrien-Morrison
Charlene McBrien-Morrison, Chief Executive Officer

HQCA Matters is published intermittently and presents HQCA representative perspectives on topics or issues relevant to healthcare in Alberta.

The HQCA announces the 2022 Patient Experience Award recipients

May 4, 2022 – Today, the HQCA honours healthcare organizations and professionals for improving the patient and family experience during another changing and challenging year in healthcare.

“The pandemic has continued to place extraordinary pressures on service providers, yet many have shown a commitment to continually improving patient and family experiences,” notes Sue Peters, Chair of the HQCA’s Patient and Family Advisory Committee and a member of the final selection panel.

“Once again we see teams listening to patients and families, taking action to improve, and empowering patients and families to guide their own care,” adds Charlene McBrien-Morrison, Chief Executive Officer of the HQCA. “This is at the heart of person-centred care. These awards bring awareness to great work being done across Alberta to improve the patient experience, and show how the patient and family voice can make the healthcare system better.” 

Click here to read about the 2022 recipients.

Click here to read the news release.