PER S P E C TI V ES
VOL 1
ISSUE 1
IN THIS ISSUE
Welcome
The College is pleased to introduce you to our new
registrant communications initiative, Perspectives. You can
look forward to six editions annually, delivered in the format
of your choice, reflecting on issues of thought leadership,
applied practice and data exchange.
What to Expect from the College
The College’s mandate is to protect the public interest,
however we also work in collaboration with physiotherapists.
Discover how you can expect to be supported by
the College and what the College expects of you.
Communications
After a year-long odyssey, a communications plan is in
place and in implementation. Learn what we have in store
and how it will help to achieve the goals of the College’s
strategic framework, increasing registrant engagement and
public confidence.
Patient Health Literacy
There are over 145 spoken languages in use in Canada, so
it’s not surprising that patient health literacy needs attention.
However, language barriers are not the only obstacles. Think
you’re fully communicating with your patients? Think again.
Celebrating Quality Care
The College celebrates the profession and quality care with
its 2009 annual awards, but there’s something new on the
horizon; a significant investment in the form of the Award for
Research and Advancing Quality Care. Find out how you
can apply or nominate someone for these awards.
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College of Physiotherapists of Ontario
WELCOME
Welcome to our first edition of Perspectives, our new-style communications vehicle,
bringing you information and education related to the practice of physiotherapy in Ontario!
We are so pleased to introduce you to this new communications piece, as well as to
give you a sneak-peak at the direction and look we’re taking with our communications in
general.
In an effort to present issues that affect you in a concise, easy-to-read style, you will receive
each four-page issue in the format that works best for you; electronic or print, based on
your choice as indicated in your registrant profile (to change your preference go to https://
epartner.collegept.org). Produced six times annually, articles and features will fall into
three main categories: Thought Leadership; Applied Practice; and Data Exchange. Future
Lori Neill
Jan Robinson
stories by College staff and guest writers may include such topics as privacy, patient
President
Registrar
safety, human rights, mandatory reporting, cultural competence, liability insurance and
others. As always, we welcome your ideas and suggestions for meaningful articles that you feel will benefit your colleagues.
In order to receive your comments and to enhance the value of Perspectives to all readers, a survey will be accessible via our website
at http://www.collegept.org and you will have the opportunity to submit ideas for future editions through this forum.
We hope you will enjoy Perspectives and we look forward to your feedback. This is just one of the many tools being implemented from
our new communications plan which will be unveiled later in this edition. Read on for the complete scoop!
What to Expect
“High achievement always takes place in the framework of
high expectations”. - Charles Kettering
The profession, through its steward – the College of
Physiotherapists of Ontario – has set a high performance bar
for itself and for the benefit of its consumers. The profession
holds itself to excellence and high ideals. Its standards reflect
ethics in practice, quality care and competence.
The “expectation” level set for physiotherapists in the province
is to be celebrated. While sometimes daunting to registrants,
the message the profession gives is one of commitment,
patients-first, and trust related to outcomes. This is an
engaging and important message.
Physiotherapists however, often view themselves in a oneway conversation. While contributing to standards developed
with the College, the appearance on the ground is of College
dominance; an organization, while important to the profession,
engaged in setting rules, not in partnership.
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The College, in its rightful place, represents the public interest
side of the profession; it is but one element in professionbased leadership. The College’s interests focus on safe, quality
physiotherapy care for Ontarians. Dialogue on this important topic
is actually not one-way – in fact it has three sides and it is about
expectation:
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Expectations of the physiotherapist by the College
Expectations of the public from physiotherapists, and
Expectations of the College both by physiotherapists
and the public
From the vantage point of the physiotherapist, expecting something
from the College may be new, but expect the following credo:
You can expect to be:
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Informed
Resourced
Heard
Represented
With an emphasis on the public view, each of these expectations
has a vision.
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College of Physiotherapists of Ontario
Expect to be informed – The College provides up to date
information and data to permit physiotherapists to work to
their fullest potential related to safe, quality care. The College
measures the performance of its regulatory role and reports
regularly on its outcomes and strategies.
Expect to be resourced – The College strives to provide
resource materials in various formats that support registrant
understanding and learning which facilitates integration in
practice.
Expect to be heard – The College engages registrants in
ongoing dialogue as it sets policy and standards. All College
processes endeavour to ensure fairness, whether the issue
involves an investigation, a hearing or an application.
Expect to be represented – The College is not a professionbased advocate. However, as a leader in professional issues
that matter to the delivery of safe, quality physiotherapy care,
the College is committed to visibility, strategic discussions and
collaborative initiatives within the profession and beyond.
So what do “expectations” of the College really look like?
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Accountability – hold us accountable to what Council
intends
Ask questions
Respond to requests for input
Read the varied correspondence
Challenge the annual report
As Charles Dickens said in Great Expectations, “Take nothing
on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better
rule.”
Together, in the public interest, we’re better.
Communications
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe once said that thinking is easy,
acting is difficult and to put one’s thoughts into action is the
most difficult thing in the world.
We know. We just spent the better part of the last year
discovering that for ourselves, so you can imagine what a relief
it is to have finally settled upon a communications plan that
clearly maps out how to bring life, in a communications sense,
to our strategic framework.
It all started about this time last year. We acknowledged a lot of
really good work had gone into the last several years of creating
awareness for the College, especially for our registrants in
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developing a strong “brand”, if you will, in marketing jargon.
However, the time was upon us to take things to the next
level, extending our reach to educate and enlighten the
public (patients) and partnering more with our stakeholders.
Working with notable communications gurus at Manifest
Communications, an overall strategic direction, including the
hiring of a communications team, was put forward.
With the hiring of Karin Micheelsen, Director of Communications
and Katherine Gaskin, Communications Associate, we now have
a strong, in-house team of professionals working to develop the
high-level strategies and execute deliverables that enable us
to put our thoughts into action. One of Karin’s first and most
important tasks was to structure a three-year communications
plan which will permit the College to realize the goals of its
strategic framework.
Dividing our audience base into three distinct sections; patients,
physiotherapists and stakeholders, a plan to engage and
educate each, through the promotion of “quality care” has been
developed in support of our organizational vision. For patients
this is verbalized as “Expect Quality Care”; for physiotherapists,
it’s “Partners in Quality Care”, an extension of the messaging
developed in our Quality Management Program; and for
stakeholders, it is a combination of the previous message
“Leading in Regulation” and “Partners in Quality Care”.
Our foundation is now in place to move forward – we know what
we want to do and why we want to do it. Now, the question is
“How?”. First, you are going to see some changes in how we
look and how we present information. These changes will be
most noticeable in our website which we expect to re-launch in
January, 2009. Our goal is to create a site that is more intuitive
and user friendly, one that embodies a common navigation
principle throughout and is searchable.
Next, you’ll start to see our “refreshed look” applied to our
materials including the 2009 Registrants’ Guide, Perspectives,
updated standards and guides and all new documentation. In
time, the College will begin to move into the realm of trade show
and conference participation as well as education campaigns
and events.
How will we know if it’s working? - We constantly seek feedback
on our initiatives and will solicit this important information from
both our physiotherapists and their patients in order to measure
the effectiveness of our efforts.
This is but a mere “taste” of what’s to come. We are extremely
excited about the future and look forward to positioning
the College for greater public awareness and professional
engagement.
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College of Physiotherapists of Ontario
Patient Health Literacy
The cultural mix of Canada
is vast and according to the
websites Languages of the
World and Enthnologue, there
are 145 languages spoken in
Canada. Next, consider this,
of a population of just over 32
million, there are over 27,000
blind and almost 2 million
deaf citizens. Think you’re
fully communicating with your
patients? Think again.
With health-literacy skills
that are considered to
be at Level 2 and below
(IALSS definition), 60%
of adult Canadians lack
the capacity to obtain,
understand and act
upon health information
and services and to
make appropriate health
decisions on their own.
With language needs almost as vast as the land itself, it’s
not surprising that patient health literacy needs attention, but
language barriers are not the only obstacles.
The higher a
person’s education
status and ability
to learn about
health, the better
that person’s
health.
Health literacy is the degree to
which patients have the ability to
understand and process health
information in order to make informed
health care decisions. This also
includes numeracy skills, essential
for such tasks as calculating dosages,
understanding insurance coverage,
etc. Studies have shown that this ability can vary depending on
age, culture, education level, income and language skills. Poor
health literacy can affect a patient’s ability to seek treatment,
communicate issues and information, complete paperwork and
to appreciate, promote and maintain optimum health.
Improving Patient Health Literacy
1. Is the information appropriate to the patient?
a. Who are your patients?
b. Consider and respect the demographics, cultures,
languages of your patients
c. Are there any other communication barriers?
2. Is the information accessible?
a. Keep information simple – use plain language in short
sentences and use a larger font for written instructions
b. Use diagrams and graphics to illustrate concepts
3. Information on the web
a. Keep navigation simple and intuitive – less is more –
Flash animations and fancy graphics will make your
site more difficult to navigate
b. Make your site searchable and include a site map
c. Make your contact info easy to find
4. Conversing with patients
a. Listen and ask open ended questions
b. Check for patient understanding – ask them to repeat
instructions in their own words
c. Participate in cultural competency training
This topic will be further examined in future editions of
Perspectives. If you would like to learn more about patient health
literacy, please visit:
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http://www.iom.edu/report.asp?id=19723
http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/epcsums/litsum.htm
http://search.ccl-cca.ca/NR/rdonlyres/CB3135D3-549345FA B870-1A3D3ABD6EC4/0/HealthLiteracyinCanada.pdf
Celebrating Quality Care
Recently, you will have received a postcard announcing the
calling for nominations/applications for the 2009 Quality Care
Awards. Hopefully, from the celebratory feel of the cards and the
associated web pages, you have noticed that there have been a
few changes…
The Dianne Millette Fellowship Award has been renamed The
Award for Research Advancing Quality Care and now carries
a prize value of $5,000. This award recognizes clinically based
physiotherapists who are involved in research focussed on
improving the quality and safety at point of care within various
models of delivery. This prize is intended to assist the recipient
with the associated costs involved in the dissemination of the
research to a larger audience, i.e. conference registration fees
and transportation costs, publication costs, etc.
“This award recognizes the immense value of this type of research
to the health system and to the public and seeks to invest in a
physiotherapist’s pursuit and presentation of this research”, said
Jan Robinson, Registrar.
The second award, The Award of Distinction, celebrates a
physiotherapist’s outstanding contributions to both the profession
and the broader community in Ontario through accomplishment
in health related volunteerism and professional activities.
For complete information regarding the application/nomination
process and to download the applicable forms, please visit
http://www.collegept.org/2009awards. Applications/nominations
must be received no later than 4:30pm on January 31, 2009.
The winners will be announced at the Awards Reception on
June 22, 2009.