Reaching over 1800 people in the community and the university, this newsletter promotes patient and community involvement in health professional education at UBC.
UBC Students Take Action Towards Reconciliation
Photo by Cally Tam (pharmacy student) at Caregiver camp
In April, UBC president Santa Ono issued a statement of apology to survivors of residential schools on behalf of the university. The apology included a call to the UBC community to take action.
For the past 12 years, the program has been a way for students to learn about the intergenerational effects of colonization and what they can do to help bridge barriers as health care professionals. This year 17 students took part from 10 different health disciplines including clinical and counselling psychology, dentistry, dental hygiene, dietetics, kinesiology, medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, and pharmacy.
"I learned new and beautiful ways of knowing and thinking. I learned about connection to people and land. I learned respect and patience." - Occupational Therapy student.
Experience of Care Team (back to front):
Clare Price-Dowd, Karl Roberts and Gill Algor
In 2014, Clare Price-Dowd, Senior Program Lead for Evaluation and Patient Experience with the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, visited UBC to learn from our patient engagement programs.
She met with patient educators, students and faculty and took what she learned back to the UK to inform the development of a large-scale leadership education initiative for over 20,000 NHS staff.
Since her visit, patient engagement has grown at the NHS. The Experience of Care Team has expanded and patients are now part of hiring decisions, including appointing panels for top executives.
After reading a paper about the Health Mentors program in The Clinical Teacher, Cristina Di Silvestre, associate professor at Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago Chile, presented the idea at a journal club meeting with the Centre for Educational Development in the Faculty of Medicine.
"As a sociologist I've always been interested in the relationship among patients and health care agents and at the same time interested in the social causes of health problems. The program fit with the goals of my Faculty as well as my professional motivation." said Cristina.
She applied for funding from the Innovation and Capacity Building for Teaching at the university and was successful.
With her colleagues Cristina Biehl (Medicine) and Katalina Khalilie Jadue (Nutrition and Dietetics) she will coordinate a pilot program with medical and dietetics students. Cristina will visit UBC September 27 - October 7th for the start of the 8th cohort of the Health Mentors program to learn first hand from program participants. We look forward to her visit!
If you are a mentor, student or faculty member who is available to share your program experiences with Cristina during her visit, please contact cathy.kline@ubc.ca.
Margaret was a true champion for the Health Mentors program. She was part of two videos to share her experiences as a mentor (1:09) and promote (1:28 & 3:47) the program. We are grateful for her many contributions as a mentor, steering committee member, research participant and donor.
A celebration of life will be held at VanDusen Botanical Garden Floral Hall 5251 Oak St, Vancouver on Thursday August 30 at 11.00am.
