Grant: Operating Grant: Transitions in Care - Best and Wise Practices Grants

Illness can be a very stressful, anxiety provoking experience for patients. This experience can be even more challenging for rural patients who may need to leave their home communities and travel to an unfamiliar urban area to receive care that is not available locally. Throughout their healthcare journey, there are many different steps where challenges may arise, including during transfer, while in an unfamiliar medical environment and upon return home. With a focus on Northwestern British Columbia (BC), this study seeks to better understand patient and family experiences as they go through this process. By understanding their experiences, we can better support individuals and families from rural and remote communities as they need to travel away from their home communities to receive medical care. This study will start by building a Stakeholder Advisory Board of patient partners, providers researchers and policy makers to help guide this research and also to develop research experience in Northwestern BC. It will review existing literature, paying special attention to local community reports in addition to academic publications. It will then conduct focus groups with groups of individuals who have been impacted by medical travel to better understand their experiences. It will also conduct patient journey mapping to get a detailed appreciation of the steps that people go through when they transition from care in their home communities to larger centres. Finally, it will hold community forums to share the information gathered and seek additional input and policy recommendations from community members in rural and remote communities in Northwestern BC. In addition to collecting information on this important topic, this study aims to better engage community members through a patient-oriented research approach and to build research capacity in rural and remote areas in Northwestern BC.