Ross Wiseman

Ross Wiseman says a better disclosure procedure for patients will build a better public process.

The province’s Health minister said the Institute for Healthcare Communications, which has an office in Canada, is focused mostly on training health professionals to deal with “unfortunate outcomes” with proper and timely disclosure to patients.

In an April 8 Transcontinental Media article, Wiseman said an American firm had been engaged to provide training in communications and Katheryne Stewart, manager of the Institute in Canada, confirmed her Canadian not-for-profit company has started to set up training for about 50 people in the four regions.

“I think one of the benefits here is once health organizations start understanding the principles of disclosure, the patients’ need to know, how you exchange that information, how you share it, when you share it, the kind of information you do share, then a natural extension of that is the public disclosure piece,” Wiseman said. “We’ve already mapped out in a policy framework how you go about managing the whole issue of public disclosure of information and the sharing of that information in the public domain.”

He said the first place work has to start with better communication is disclosure for patients.

Public disclosure can be built around the policy framework that came out of the Task Force On Adverse Health Events, according to the minister. The task force was convened in response to the hormone receptor test debacle in 2007, but the press release announcing the task force said the mandate went beyond that single issue to how health communications are handled in the province.

The report from chair Robert Thompson, which was presented in December 2008, states: “not enough people are trained in how to conduct a good disclosure, including doctors, and consequently the responsibility often falls to quality/risk management officials.” It goes on to say “disclosure in a multi-patient context is a difficult issue because extra considerations of public communication enter the picture, especially if the news can leak to the media before all the disclosures are completed.”

Wiseman said the Institute for Healthcare Communications is a specialist in a single area, not a general communications firm with the responsibility for training staff in public disclosure.

He said the education sessions are necessary to change the attitudes of workers and administrators with regard to disclosure to patients, families and the public.

“If you’re going to really have a change in the culture, you’d have to start with multiple approaches whether it’s a policy piece, whether it’s a legislative piece, an education component, which is always critical. It keeps getting reinforced over time. What happens is it becomes entrenched in the way of life  on a day to day basis in the workplace and over time it becomes very natural.”