Sudbury hospital teams up with health centres to help aboriginal patients

Morning North4:50Sudbury hospital using aboriginal navigator

It can be hard to figure out the health care system at the best of times. But it can be especially hard for aboriginal patients who might be far from home and speak another language. Jenifer Norwell has more on a possible solution.More aboriginal patients in the northeast are getting help to figure out the healthcare system.

This spring, Health Sciences North created a formal process to refer patients to patient navigators at three aboriginal health centres.

The positions have been in existence for the last few years, but because there was no formal process, many patients weren't receiving help.

Aboriginal patient navigators help patients access better care by helping with things such as appointments and paperwork.

Ailene Restoule of the Shkagamik-Kwe health centre said her position helps build trust with aboriginal patients.

"A lot of my patients tell me a lot of personal things, like a lot of their histories with abuse and a lot of the people feel judged still," she said.

"They don't disclose some of the things they say to me. I think people would understand them better if they did."

'Complex' system

The vice president of Diagnostic Imaging and Cancer Services with the hospital said the program should make a difference for patients.

"It's a complex system and it's often even more complex for First Nation, Inuit and Metis people, where they're accessing services in a whole range of communities across the region," Mark Hartman said.

When those patients come to Health Sciences North it could be a "fairly foreign experience for them.

"When communication breaks down, we often end up with situations where people are upset, unhappy and don't have a good experience with their care," he continued.

"There is a lot of evidence that when people have a good experience, they actually do better."

A look ahead

This isn't the first time the hospital has explored having someone to help out aboriginal patients. It first brought in an aboriginal patient navigator for the Northeast Cancer Centre three years ago, as part of a larger provincial project pushed by Cancer Care Ontario.

Sherri Baker was hired into that role and has been there ever since. But up until now, Baker ran into problems when she would meet patients who weren't at the Northeast Cancer Centre.

"I'll often go out to the community and do community presentations about the service," she said.

"Now we're able to say we also have this because that was one of the things that the communities were asking for ... now we're able to all work together."

Since the hospital formally started the program, more than 35 patients have received help from the Aboriginal patient navigator.

Hospital officials say they expect the number of people accessing the service to increase as the program becomes more well-known.

As for Restoule, she's excited for the future.

"I'd like to see more navigators eventually within all of the hospital settings and they could all collaborate together and it would be a more fluent accessible system."