Reports + Summaries

Health care providers are expected to deliver safe, patient-centered care and address discrimination under their code of ethics. At the 2023 BC-PAN annual meeting, public advisors discussed how regulators can support health care providers in ensuring access to medical care without discrimination.

Colleges have found that the public may not be aware of the new changes coming to healthcare regulation involving amalgamation. The college partners are interested to hear from public advisors about their questions or concerns with the process.

Colleges have found that many complaints include instances of miscommunication or lack of adequate communication between the health care provider and the patient. The college partners are interested to hear from public advisors about their expectations for communication. Colleges would also like to know more about current public expectations about virtual care. Most have standards in place to guide virtual care, and the outcomes of this conversation will help review these standards.

The end of year summary describes the work and activities of the BC-PAN's second operational year, from March 2021 to February 2022. It highlights the group's achievements throughout the year and colleges' impacts.

To ensure that the resources created by regulatory colleges for the public are accessible and effective, college partners are seeking the BC-PAN’s feedback on current resources being developed as well as to review resources that are already available to the public. The BC-PAN reviewed resources developed by the colleges to explain their mandates and provided guidance to college partners on ways to make public information resources more effective and relevant to the public.

All regulated health professionals in BC must follow their colleges’ code of ethics, which articulates their ethical and professional commitments and responsibilities as a health care professional. Colleges asked BC-PAN for input to better understand the public’s expectations of key elements that should be included in their codes of ethics as well as their ideas for publicly communicating codes of ethics.

Regulatory colleges protect the public by maintaining a searchable and public directory of registrants. The college partners sought input from the BC-PAN regarding what information the public expects to find on their public registers, as well as ways to increase public awareness and use of public registers.

Each advisor was asked to find the list of college websites on the BC-PAN website, choose any college, find a member of that profession who lives near to them, find information about how to file a complaint, and find the practice standard related to record keeping. This isn’t an exercise about achieving the goal but about identifying the difficulties in achieving the goal.

Dual relationships occur when a health care professional treats family members, close personal friendships, commercial relationships or others with whom they have a non-professional relationship. College partners and public advisors explored some key considerations for regulating dual relationships, such as the welfare of the person being given health care, effectiveness of service or treatment, avoidance of harm and exploitation, conflict of interest, and the impairment of clinical judgment.

To support patients to be empowered partners in their health care, they need to understand the services and treatments being offered to them. Exploring what informed consent means to the public, how the process should look at all stages of care, and why it is important can help regulators understand public expectations how the consent process should work. BC-PAN input on this topic will be used to: