Posted on: June 27, 2022
The annual BC Patient Safety and Quality Council’s Quality Forum, held on June 1-2, 2022 at the Hyatt Regency in Vancouver, provided a unique opportunity to share and discuss quality improvement across the health care system. Eleven abstracts submitted from Island Health this year included seven storyboards that featured work involving or lead by Physician Quality Improvement (PQI) Alumni. The PQI Alumni team storyboard for “Good Call” was awarded “Storyboard Winner”.
“Good Call” is a quality improvement initiative commissioned by the Health Authority Medical Advisory Committee (HAMAC) and Combined Quality Oversight Council (CQOC) to improve on-call communication for the healthcare team, and has expanded through the work of the Quality, Safety and Improvement team to include representation from the entire multidisciplinary team who are now building a quality improvement action series.
The project began in June 2021 with the second annual PQI Alumni Summit led by PQI Alumni Strategy co-chairs Dr. Alex Hoechsmann and Julia Porter. The event was designed to engage PQI Alumni on a system-level topic: When physicians are on call, what are the factors that influence how quickly they attend in person when called to assess a patient?
The Island Health Physician Quality Improvement team saw this as an opportunity to bring together quality improvement trained physicians from a variety of medical specialities and work through the issue in order to find a new way forward.
“I am very proud of Julia for the amazing poster she put together for the Quality Forum,” said Dr. Hoechsmann after their big win. “Julia and I have been working together, with the support from the rest of the PQI team, on harnessing the collective power of the talented graduates of the PQI program here at Island Health. Obviously this award would not be possible without the participation and support of the PQI alumni so this award is also for them. Quality Improvement is so much more than a catch phrase, it is seriously needed as all of us in healthcare face present and future challenges.”
Following the success of the alumni summit events, ongoing virtual meetings are now being used as an opportunity for PQI alumni to support clinical analytics and potential improvement opportunities at Island Health.
The PQI Alumni are a group of medical staff trained in systems and quality improvement from across Island Health and represent a range of clinical services across twenty-five specialities. The Island Health PQI alumni group currently consists of 102 alumni across the Island Health region with an intake of 22 in the fall of 2022.