Engagement and Sustainment of a Patient Family Advisory Council

Purpose:
Ensure a strong and easy-to-use mechanism for tapping into the collective wisdom of our patients and their families around a host of operational questions and challenges. Our desire is to build a problem solving structure.

Significance:
For us to meet our patient satisfaction goals we had to hear from and understand that patient perspective on a wide range of issues. We also needed to build structures and processes that engaged our staff in seeking their opinions and the knowledge that they had for us.

Strategy and Implementation:
The innovation for us, was using a systematic approach to developing the structures and processes and evaluation measures for executing on a patient/ family advisory council; being deliberate in the strategies to hardwire a position of collaboration and interdisciplinary awareness. We reached into many levels in the organization and across many roles and departments to create an effective council membership to balance with our community members. The advisory council is chartered and has an executive sponsor. Our search of the literature revealed that many children's hosptial and academic centers use patiernt/family councils widely: We are a community hospital with no pediatric unit and a very small Level II NICU.

Evaluation:
The council has been meeting for the last 20 + months. They have provided input and recommendations on many initiatives in the following domains: Patient- physician communication, literacy and comprehension of printed materials, new program development and multiple communication projects.

Implications for Practice:
The Patient Family Advisory Council provides meaningful contributions to fine-tuning the patient experience, improved communication between physician, patients and their families and are always looking for the emerging opportunities to support the vision and goals on MPHS.