Imagine your loved one is in surgery. How do you feel? Concerned? Anxious? In need of an update?
“The perioperative process is a stressful ordeal, not only for patients but for their supporters as well,” says Liz Burden (IMP Class of 2022).
To help address this issue, Liz decided to focus her FLEX project on PatientLink, a new online service that sends caregivers and loved ones updates on a patient throughout the day of surgery. Now, just over a year later, Liz has won the ImpactBC Scholarship in Health Care Research and Development for her work on the app.
Under the supervision of Dr. Christopher Nguan in Vancouver, Liz surveyed patients’ families, friends, and supporters on their experiences and sources of anxiety and stress on surgery day. Upon analysis of this Phase 1 data, Liz found many individuals felt they didn’t receive frequent enough updates on the patients’ condition.
Phase 2 of the project aims to see if PatientLink can help alleviate this stressor. The app – which the team developed in-house – enables surgical teams to send patient status updates to loved ones in real-time. Due to the private nature of the information, the one-way communications platform is secure.
“This is really cool work,” says Rohit Singla (MD/PhD student, IMP Class of 2025), who also works on the project. “It has broad applications, including for rural and remote caregivers who may not be able to travel with patients.” He gives a real example of a transplant recipient who had to travel to BC for an operation. Their significant other had to remain on the other side of the country, but thanks to PatientLink, they received updates on their partner throughout the day.
Liz completed the research protocol, ethics application, and amendments for the pilot study conducted during Phase 2. And while she agrees PatientLink’s integration of technology and healthcare is exciting, Liz says the underlying principles of patient-centred care are what really makes the project shine. By basing their app on stressors identified by real patient supporters in Phase 1, the PatientLink team created a tool that people would actually find helpful on surgery day.
This involvement could also create value in other area too. “The value of involving patients –and in this case, the patients’ supporters – in healthcare decision-making and health professional education can be seen in the increased accountability of professionals, improved patient quality of care and experience, the therapeutic relationship between healthcare professional and patient, and the benefits of that relationship such as adherence to treatment plans and follow-up,” she says.
Patient-centred care is receiving a lot more attention in modern healthcare, and it’s the main focus of the scholarship Liz received for her work. Available through an endowment established by ImpactBC, the prize is available to UBC Health program students who have completed a project focusing on patient/client involvement in health care decision-making or in health professional education.
Now off-site in Victoria, Liz continues to conduct data analysis, write abstracts and manuscripts, and present findings for the PatientLink project. She has already presented the findings from Phase 1 of the project in a poster presentation at the 13th Annual Lorne D. Sullivan Lectureship & Research Day at UBC, and submitted a manuscript to the Journal of Surgical Research. She also presented the preliminary results of the pilot study in a poster presentation at the BC Patient Safety & Quality Council Quality Forum 2020 and in a podium presentation at the Northwest Urology Society 66th Annual Scientific, both of which took place in Vancouver this past February. She had also been accepted for a moderated poster presentation at the Canadian Urological Association 77th Annual Meeting in Victoria this month; however, with the conference being cancelled due to COVID-19, Liz’s abstract was published in the June issue of the Canadian Urological Association Journal instead.
“I’m really excited with the positive feedback we’ve received thus far, and I’m hopeful that this app can be extended across specialties in the future,” Liz says. “PatientLink provides an opportunity to improve connectedness during an incredibly stressful time in the lives of patients and their loved ones.”