Coveted NSERC research award earned by Coastal Director

One of Coastal’s own is the recent recipient of a coveted NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) research award, designed to encourage research skills in graduate students across the country. The award was granted by the selection committee at Royal Roads University.

Coastal’s Director of Quality and Patient Care, Chantale Pamplin, was notified not long ago about her successful proposal for research, enabling her to study ways that situational awareness might be able to help improve communications around patient handovers between care staff.

“I’m curious about how things like human factors elements affect the patient handover process, a key part of care that, by its nature, is an important part of ensuring safe and quality care”, says Chantale. “Like all processes that involve people, there are a number of factors that can influence the success of this handoff, including the environment in which it occurs and the ability of both parties to communicate within that environment.

Chantale’s research proposal was one of only 16 that were chosen from close to 200 proposals at Royal Roads University. The research will be conducted with Registered Nurses and Licensed Practical Nurses at both Lions Gate Hospital and Vancouver General Hospital and involve interviews and observations of patient care transition in the perioperative setting.

As with so much of what we do here in Coastal, we’re exploring ways that we might be able to help staff enhance the care they provide,” she says. The hope is that lessons learned through the research can be applied to develop new communication strategies among nurses on in the perioperative area and to enhance curriculum in nursing orientation modules.