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Patient involvement a priority in health care planning

Palliative care physician speaks in Sudbury
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Health Sciences North hosted their second instalment of their Speaker Series on April 24, welcoming Dr. Andreas Laupacis to the Nickel City. (Matt Durnan/Sudbury.com)

Health Sciences North hosted their second instalment of their Speaker Series on April 24, welcoming Dr. Andreas Laupacis to the Nickel City.

The hospital is hosting a series of guest speakers in conjunction with the development of their strategic plan and will hear from five different speakers over the course of two months.

Laupacis is a palliative care physician at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto and the subject matter of his talk fell very much in line with the overarching goal of the speaker series itself.

In advance of the first speaker in the series, Health Sciences North's special advisor to Dominic Giroux for the strategic plan Maureen McLelland explained that this "discovery phase" that the strategic plan steering committee is undertaking is to get the public involved and have them have their say when it comes to shaping the future of both the hospital and its research institute (HSNRI).

Dr. Laupacis' talk was centred around patient involvement in the health care field and the importance of looking at the collective experiences of patients in order to provide better care.

"There's increasing interest in how we involve patients more in health care in both the research we do and how we run our hospitals and our family physician offices," said Laupacis. 

"It's early days in doing that so I'm going to be speaking about and describing my experiences working with dialysis patients across the country to find out from their point of view what their priorities are. If they were funding research, what are their research priorities."

Laupacis says it's important for doctors to involve patients in the health care planning process as they are able to provide input and insight that doctors couldn't tap into otherwise.

"We often don't think of it from a system point of view or how patients look at the clinic," said Laupacis. "We can use collective experiences from a number of patients who all have their own unique perspective but together might help us. In my hospital I show up to clinic and I see patients but I actually don't plan how it's set up and I think patients could really help in terms of helping us think through how they're set up."

When referencing patients, Laupacis says it goes well beyond the individual receiving treatment, and that involvement of family members is paramount.

"A lot of people on dialysis are very old, they're frail, and frankly too tired to get into a big discussion about how we might want to manage their dialysis clinic, but their children might be keen to do that," said Laupacis.

"You also look at children of parents with dementia, or parents with kids. Obviously a teenager can tell you what they want, but a three-year-old isn't going to be able to do that."

Much like Laupacis' points, the entire HSN speaker series is based in having the community come out and get involved and share their input. 

"This series is really helping to inform our community on key topics that might influence our future design and delivery," said McLelland.

"We've lined up speakers that are going to make people think and think differently than they do today. It's really about thinking ahead because the strategic plan is a five-year plan and what we live with today wasn't what we lived with five years ago, and what we're going to be living with five years from now we may not have even imagined. In order to serve the community we need to know what they want."

If you were unable to attend Dr. Laupacis' talk on Tuesday evening, he will be giving a second presentation on April 25, at 7 a.m. in the Rock Garden Cafe at HSN.  


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