To determine how the practice of health professionals in rural and northern communities can best be organized, supported and developed to improve access to care and to enhance quality of care on a sustainable basis.
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Critical Care depends on the coordination and collaboration of physicians, nurses, and other health professionals to deliver care that is efficient, effective, safe, and patient-centred. As patient perspectives are often difficult to elicit in critical care settings because of the severity of illness, patients’ families frequently become involved in decision-making and care. As a result, being ‘family-centred’ is an important part of being ‘patient-centred’ in critical care.
Sixteen percent of infants ≤32 weeks gestation admitted to Canadian neonatal intensive care units (NICU) acquire an infection while in the hospital, making nosocomial infections one of the most important causes of mortality, morbidity and resource use in the NICU. Previous efforts by individual NICUs to reduce the incidence of nosocomial infections often were not evidence-based, did not use data from the institutions concerned, and did not yield results that could easily be generalized for use in other NICUs.
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Workplace-related mental illness is becoming an increasingly serious problem across Canada and the provinces. The estimated cost of mental illness in Canadian workplaces is currently well over $20 billion, with $12 billion due to lost work days and $11 billion due to decreased productivity. In British Columbia, the healthcare industry is one of the more critical job sectors shouldering these costs, where workplace related mental illness currently accounts for 13% of successful long-term benefit claims by healthcare workers). The rise in disability and absences due to mental illness put greater stress on an already overburdened workforce that needs to remain health to provide quality patient care.
Continue reading “Developing Healthy Workplace Environments Within BC Healthcare”