Quality and Safety

Patient care supports

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PHC Medical Staff have access to a full range of resources, education and support to draw on.

Corporate Policies
As a member of the Medical Staff, please familiarize yourself with the following corporate policies, available from the PHC Intranet.

  • CPV0300 Patient Safety Incident Management
  • CPV0700 Disclosure of Serious Adverse Events
  • CPF0700 DNAR: Do Not Attempt Resuscitation
  • CPF1100 Options for Care
  • CPF0500 Consent to Health Care
  • CPV0900 Non-Staff Practitioners
  • CPT2200 Hand Hygiene Policy
Ethics Services
Medical Staff may access Ethics Services for clinical and organizational consultations to explore issues and choices surrounding difficult decisions when there is confusion or disagreement about the right course of action.

This service also helps administrators and leaders with difficult ethical decisions about programs and projects, including assisting with policy development.

Ethics Services provides a number of educational activities including in-service teaching, teaching rounds, and conferences and seminars.

Ethics Services is also involved with PHC’s response to patient/resident requests for MAiD.

Situations in which a clinical ethics consultation might be helpful include, but are not limited to:

  • Conflicts about what is the “best” course of action in a clinical situation
  • Patients’ rights on consenting to and refusing treatments
  • Health-care proxies for patients who are incompetent to decide for themselves
  • Termination or continuation of life-extending procedures
  • Issues regarding advance directives, and “DNAR/Options for Care” orders
  • Issues regarding fair policies (e.g., scarce resources)
  • Conflicts with caregivers or loved ones
  • Disagreements regarding disclosing/withholding information to/from patients or family members
  • Ethical issues that arise in long-term care and residential settings

Medical Staff may request/ schedule an ethics consultation at: ethics@providencehealth.bc.ca

To learn more visit: http://www.providencehealthcare.com/ethics_services/

Infection Prevention and Control
The Infection Prevention and Control Team aims to create and sustain a culture in which infection prevention and control is integrated into all aspects of care.

Hand Hygiene

  • Hand hygiene is recognized as the most basic and effective intervention for decreasing transmission of infections.
  • The Ministry of Health has mandated that all health care workers receive basic education on hand hygiene. Physicians must complete the Online Hand Hygiene module prior to starting at PHC.
  • All PHC staff, including medical staff, must adhere to hand hygiene policy at PHC.

Transmission Based Precautions

  • Control measures are based on how an infectious agent is transmitted, and include education and implementation of standard, contact, droplet, and airborne precautions.
  • Standard: Practices that apply to all patients, regardless of suspected or confirmed infection status. Healthcare workers must assess the risk of exposure to blood, body fluids and non-intact skin and utilize precautions where appropriate. Standard precautions must be used in addition to contact, droplet and airborne precautions.
  • Contact: Precautions (gloves and gowns) to prevent the transmission of infectious agents (e.g., antibiotic resistant organisms, Clostridium difficile) through direct or indirect contact with the patient or patient’s environment.
  • Droplet: Precautions (surgical mask and face shield) to prevent the transmission of infectious agents (e.g., respiratory viruses, Neisseria meningitidis, Bordetella pertussis) that travel as large air particles for distances less than 1 metre.
  • Airborne: Precautions (N95 respirator and negative pressure room) to prevent the transmission of aerosolized infectious agents (e.g., measles, varicella or disseminated zoster, tuberculosis) that can be suspended in air.

Infection prevention and control resources

Check the PHC intranet for:

  • online IPAC Manual
  • information about MRSA/VRE screening orders for patients admitted to acute care
  • information about influenza-like illness
Incident Reporting
All incident reporting is done via the web-based Patient Safety Learning System (PSLS) on PHC Connect. For assistance with reporting or managing an event, contact psls@providencehealth.bc.ca

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