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Event
Patient voice in healthcare
Patient Safety Learning posted an event in Community Calendar
untilImagine Citizens Network believes meaningful change in healthcare begins by listening to the people at the centre of it. This webinar will bring together health leaders, advocates, and community voices for an inspiring conversation about strengthening the patient voice in health care and exploring how stories and lived experiences can help drive real system improvement. Hosted by the Institute of Health Economics, the session will highlight best practices in increasing the patient voice in health care, featuring the internationally recognized Care Opinion program and the growing work happening in Alberta to gather feedback from Albertans receiving health services across the province. Together, we’ll explore how creating safe, accessible ways for people to share their experiences can build trust, improve care, strengthen accountability, and shape a more responsive health system for everyone. Featured speakers include: • Catherine Douglas, Health Advocate, Alberta • James Munro, Director, Research & Development, Care Opinion UK • Don McLeod, Executive Director, Imagine Citizens Network • Mollie Cole, Executive Director, Health System Improvement, Health Quality Alberta Moderator: John Sproule, Senior Policy Director, Institute of Health Economics Register -
News ArticleTwo people have died in Canada after donating plasma at a chain of clinics that has been under scrutiny by federal inspectors for failing to keep accurate records, screen donors or maintain its machines. While experts say the deaths are exceedingly rare, critics say Canada’s embrace of private companies to handle blood products reflects a “slow collapse of a system that has been the envy of the world”. Health Canada, the federal agency that regulates plasma clinics, said it had received reports from the Health Canada said its investigations were continuing. Grifols said in a statement it had “no reason to believe that there is a correlation between the donors’ passing and plasma donation”. The Canadian Blood Service said it was “deeply saddened” by the deaths and that it monitored donor health and followed “the highest safety standards to safeguard both those who donate in our centres and the patients who receive blood products”. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 12 March 2026
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News Article
Canada no longer measles-free as outbreaks spread
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Canada is no longer measles-free because of ongoing outbreaks, international health experts said on Monday, as childhood vaccination rates fall and the highly contagious virus spreads across North and South America. The loss of the country’s measles elimination status comes more than a year after the highly contagious virus started spreading. Canada has logged 5,138 measles cases this year and two deaths. Both were babies who were exposed to the measles virus in the womb and born prematurely. Measles elimination is a symbolic designation, but it represents a hard-won battle against the infectious disease. It is earned when a country shows it stopped continuous spread of the virus within local communities, though occasional cases might still pop up from travel. It is prevented by a vaccine administered routinely and safely to children around the world. “It’s a deeply disheartening development. It’s a deeply worrisome development. And, frankly, it’s an embarrassing development,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a Brown University infectious disease expert. “No country with the amount of resources of Canada – or other countries in North America even – should lose their measles elimination status.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 11 November 2025 -
Content ArticleThis one-page guide outlines six ways health systems in Canada can improve to better support and retain the health workforce. Based on evidence and feedback from health leaders nationwide, it describes six strategies that can help make health systems more supportive and sustainable for those who work in them: Fostering physically safe work environments. Enhancing sustainable staffing. Building flexible work structures. Provide equitable and appropriate compensation. Ensuring supportive and inclusive workplaces. Supporting career advancement. Although produced by Healthcare Excellence Canada, it is relevant to health systems globally.
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Content ArticleNew Hospital Harm data shows that 1 in every 17 hospital stays in Canada involved patient harm in 2023-2024, highlighting the ongoing need to make healthcare safer for everyone. Reported by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), the rate of hospital harm has held steady at 6% for the past four years after increasing in 2020. In this article, Denise McCuaig, Executive Director for Healthcare Transformation & Capacity Building at Healthcare Excellence Canada looks at how effective communication and engaging patients and their caregivers can improve the safety and quality of healthcare. She outlines four ways to prioritise safety through patient engagement: Create an engaging environment. Engagement-capable environments value the wisdom and experiences of patients and their essential care partners, fostering a culture of patient- and family-centred care that helps improve quality, safety and equitable outcomes. Foster inclusive communication. Inclusive communication is a key skill for healthcare providers, helping reduce misunderstandings, bridge communication gaps and make all patients feel valued. Recognise different forms of harm. Safety extends beyond the physical; psychological, social and spiritual wellbeing are also important. Engaging diverse individuals with lived experiences and providing trauma-informed care can help reduce harm, no matter what form. Learn to prevent harm. Taking a proactive approach to patient safety enables healthcare providers to prevent harm before it happens. Understanding how safety incidents affect patients, caregivers and healthcare teams can lead to better safety outcomes.
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Content ArticlePatient safety provides an important foundation for high-quality care. Research in Canada and elsewhere has identified substantial levels of harm in hospitals and other settings; these results spurred the development and spread of safety practices, along with strategies to strengthen organizational training, incident reporting and analysis and a host of resources intended to reduce the burden of harm. Yet, despite these efforts, 20 years after the publication of the Canadian Adverse Event study and other studies, many leaders believe progress in patient safety has stalled. Human resource issues dominate current strategic plans, but these issues need to be linked to renewed efforts to assure safer care.
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Content ArticleHealthcare Excellence Canada 2023-24 impact report highlights how they have supported people from across the country to deliver measurable impact in diverse care settings across the country—working with hundreds of individuals and organisations to deliver programmes involving 1,087 teams that serve more than 920,000 patients and residents each year. Learn more about how Healthcare Excellence Canada (HEC) works to spread innovation, strengthen capabilities and catalyse policy change to support large-scale system improvement, from supporting the healthcare workforce to improving access to healthcare to fostering cultural safety.
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EventAs part of Care Forward, a national movement focused on making care better for over a million people across the country, Healthcare Excellence Canada with supporting organisations are launching new offerings that provide participants with funding, resources and coaching to drive impact on four key priorities: expanding care access, helping more people age where they call home, advancing person-centred long-term care and strengthening the health workforce. Join this webinar series to explore these offerings and how you can get involved: Right Care Challenge supports health and social care organizations to launch or enhance initiatives that ensure patients receive the right care, at the right time, in the right place—all while helping reduce avoidable emergency department visits. Enhancing Integrated Care supports primary and community care organisations to strengthen integrated team-based care models, including virtual care, making access easier and reducing pressure on emergency departments. Paramedics and Social Prescribing helps paramedic teams use social prescribing to connect clients with local community services, improving overall health and wellbeing. Primary Care Access Improvement helps team-based primary care organisations create efficiencies and optimise team functioning, so patients receive timely care, regardless of urgency or demand. Nursing Home Without Walls supports jurisdictions across the country to bring nursing home support and services to older adults in their own homes, helping them age safely and comfortably where they already live. Sparking Change in Appropriate Use of Antipsychotics Awards Program provides long-term care homes across Canada with support to use person-centered approaches to reduce potentially inappropriate antipsychotic use. Register
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EventuntilHealth professionals are regularly confronted with emotional events in the delivery of care. While some of these events induce extreme emotional states such as stress, most are associated with milder states such as frustration at a perceived lack of professionalism, sadness at an undesired patient prognosis, or happiness following a positive clinical encounter. Current research in neuroscience and cognitive sciences indicates that emotions modulate a variety of cognitive processes, including perception, memory, attention, and reasoning. As such, emotion-evoking situations likely affect what information health professionals attend to, what they remember, as well as the way in which they make decisions in practice. The purpose of this presentation is to present an overview of the literature on emotions and performance, and discuss the implications for patient care. Further information in the attached pdf. Seminar_Abstract+bio_5.12.24.V.L.docx
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EventuntilJoin the conversation as our panelists discuss healthcare harm and safety from multiple perspectives and across multiple settings. Registration is now open — sign up for as many as you like! The webinars in this series include: Expanding perspectives: Understanding and reducing healthcare harm First Nations, Inuit and Métis experiences with racism in healthcare systems Let’s talk about safer care in the community Courageous leadership: Enabling safer healthcare environments Register
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Event
Getting ready for CPSW: Moving to action
Patient Safety Learning posted an event in Community Calendar
Recognising and reducing healthcare harm matters to those receiving and delivering care. In this session, participants will explore how to broaden their understanding of healthcare harm through the use of an activity card with their teams to stimulate reflection and action, together. They will also hear the experiences of healthcare leaders who have facilitated the activity with their teams and what they learned. Following the formal discussion, participants will have an opportunity to ask questions and share information and insights in a coach’s corner about planning activities and participating in Canadian Patient Safety Week. Register -
Content ArticleIn this blog, Sling the Mesh founder Kath Sansom highlights the variation in medical treatment depending on where you live in the world. Describing patient safety advocacy as "like a giant game of chess—but a hideous version where innocent people get hurt," she describes recent developments in the use of pelvic mesh globally. New Zealand recently suspended the use of a particular type of pelvic mesh at the same time as a Canadian study recommended its use for stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Kath gives a brief history of mesh sling suspension and argues that patient safety needs joined up thinking to protect women around the world.
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Content ArticleThe Strengthening Medication Safety in Long-Term Care initiative, funded by the Ontario Ministry of Long-Term Care was established in partnership with the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) Canada to address the medication safety-related recommendations in Justice Gillese’s Long-Term Care Homes Public Inquiry Report. The three-year initiative is designed to improve medication management processes, including those intended to deter and detect intentional and unintentional harm in long-term care homes across the province of Ontario. This bulletin provides an overview of the initiative and highlights selected examples of improvement projects completed in the first phase.
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Content ArticleThis bulletin from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) describes two new in-hospital infections indicators for Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) and Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). It includes a table listing CIHI’s selected patient safety performance indicators and definitions.
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Content ArticleHistorically, patient safety efforts have focused mostly on measuring and responding to harm. However, safety is much more than the absence of harm. Instead, patient safety includes looking at the whole system: its past, present and future in all its complexity. Healthcare Excellence Canada and Patients for Patient Safety Canada held many conversations with users of the health system, people who work in healthcare and safety scientists. The ideas collected suggest a new way of approaching patient safety – where everyone can contribute to creating safe conditions and where harm is more than physical. This discussion guide summarises what has been learned so far and captured in this key statement: Everyone contributes to patient safety. Together we must learn and act to create safer care and reduce all forms of healthcare harm.
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Content ArticleThe Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS) released its report on health human resources (HHR) in Canada. The report provides key findings designed to inform stakeholders (including governments). The report provides evidence-informed approaches to addressing the current challenges facing the Canadian health workforce. The three overarching themes were identified: support and retention deployment and service delivery planning and development.
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Content ArticleThe Learning Together Evaluation framework for Patient and Public Engagement (PPE) in research is an adaptable tool which can be used to plan and to evaluate patient engagement before, during and at the end of a project. The Learning Together Framework can be used in multiple ways with the purpose of mutual learning and understanding by all partners. It is rooted in seven guiding principles of patient engagement defined by the patient-oriented research community: Relationship building Co-building Equity, diversity and inclusion Support and barrier removal Transparency Sustainability Transformation
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EventuntilThis virtual workshop will provide paramedics with background theory and hands-on practice in incident analysis using Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and in proactive risk assessment using Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA). Register
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EventuntilThis virtual workshop will provide paramedics with background theory and hands-on practice in incident analysis using Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and in proactive risk assessment using Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA). Register
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EventuntilThis virtual workshop will provide participants with background theory and hands-on practice in using a multi-incident analysis to analyse a group of medication incidents that share a common topic on day 1 and introduce a novel tool called the Medication Safety Culture Indicator Matrix (MedSCIM) on day 2. Register
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EventuntilThis virtual workshop will provide participants with background theory and hands-on practice in using a multi-incident analysis to analyse a group of medication incidents that share a common topic on day 1 and introduce a novel tool called the Medication Safety Culture Indicator Matrix (MedSCIM) on day 2. Register
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EventuntilThis virtual workshop will provide health care professionals with background theory and hands-on practice in incident analysis using Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and in proactive risk assessment using Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA). Register
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EventuntilThis virtual workshop will provide health care professionals with background theory and hands-on practice in incident analysis using Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and in proactive risk assessment using Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA). Register
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EventuntilThis virtual workshop from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada will provide healthcare professionals with background theory and hands-on practice in incident analysis using Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and in proactive risk assessment using Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA). Register
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EventuntilThis virtual workshop from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada will provide healthcare professionals with background theory and hands-on practice in incident analysis using Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and in proactive risk assessment using Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA). Register
