Pharmacy Corner
RESOURCES FOR PHARMACY

16/7/2007

Hospital Pharmacists Exploring New Ground

Jennifer Lowerison is a hospital pharmacist for the Calgary Health Region. After graduating from Dalhousie University, in Halifax in 1988 with a BSc (Pharm) she worked as a pharmacist in Nova Scotia and in 1997 she obtained a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from State University of New York-Buffalo. Since then, she has been in Calgary, working for the CHR as a Patient Care Manager for Inpatient Pharmacy Services at the Peter Lougheed Centre.

This spring, however, Jennifer took to exploring new ground, by taking on a new role, as Patient and Family Centered Care Coordinator for the Peter Laugheed Centre. Patient and Family Centered Care is a project on which Calgary Health Region has collaborated with Planetree, an internationally recognized organization renowned for helping health care facilities adopt a positive care environment focused on the patient experience. See www.planetree.org

Jennifer first became interested in Patient and Family Centered Care within the Calgary Health Region, as the focus is on the patient experience within the health system. Jennifer says, “I strongly believe in engaging and empowering patients and their families to become active partners in their own health and health care services. I feel that the CHR is a wonderful health system to both receive care through and to work with and I wanted to be involved with further advancing the great care that the staff at the CHR provides! Having been a health care provider, a patient and a family member of a patient within CHR, I know that this refocusing on the patient experience can make the CHR an even better place to receive or provide health care.”

Jennifer and her CHR Patient Experience Team have found that patients come into the health region seeking medical expertise and health services, but are profoundly affected by the comfort and care offered to them. By supporting the relationship between front-line care providers and those who receive care, the patient experience is enhanced. Evidence suggests that patient and staff satisfaction, along with clinical outcomes improve when patient and family centred care principles guide practice and decision making. “Patient and Family Centred Care isn’t new,” says Jennifer. “It is a philosophy, an attitude and an approach to the care of patients and their families.” What is new seems to be the focus on health care, “through the eyes of the patients”.

The Peter Lougheed Centre is the first Calgary Health Region urban hospital site to embark on this journey towards exploring further how patient experiences can be improved.

Planetree was founded in 1978 as a non-profit organization, in the United States. Founded by a patient, the Planetree Model is committed to enhancing health care from the patient’s perspective. Planetree’s Mission statement is, “to serve as a catalyst in the development and implementation of new models of healthcare that focus on healing and nurturing body, mind and spirit. These models integrate human caring with the best of scientific medicine and complementary healing traditions.”