It’s been a big year for anniversaries here at BCPSLS. On February 25, we joined friends and colleagues to toast the 10-year anniversary of the first live launch of our safety event reporting and learning system.  And on June 7 we’ll be celebrating the 5-year anniversary of the first blog post on our website, BCPSLS Central!

Over the past five years, BCPSLS Central has had approximately 140,000 visits from almost a hundred different countries. Most of our visitors are from BC, Canada, and the United States, but you might be surprised to learn that we also receive hundreds of visits each year from Russia, the United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, and more!

Clearly, patient safety initiatives taking place right here in BC are garnering worldwide attention.

In 2017, our five most popular stories were:

1. Continuing education for pressure ulcer prevention: Taking the pressure off at Interior Health
2. Standardizing observation levels for safer mental health care
3. Patient’s View: Seeing safety through the eyes of families at BC Children’s Hospital
4. BCPSLS re:act: Improving safety for vulnerable adults across BC
5. Substance use and patient safety: First clinic for methadone treatment opioid substitution opens in Terrace

BCPSLS Central shares patient safety learnings, makes connections across programs and regions, and promotes follow-up of patient safety events though a participative approach that engages teams. As an extra bonus, the blog also helps organizations comply with recommendations from Accreditation Canada to share information about safety events and improvements with patients, families, and the community.

In addition to blog stories, BCPSLS Central includes a variety of other resources, such as:

• eLearning
• System update bulletins
• Journal articles
• Podcast interviews with patient safety experts

We think BCPSLS Central is pretty great, but just like the people who visit our site, we are always looking for ways to be better. As a result of our recent stakeholder survey, we’ve been making some changes to the site. Initial improvements include a refreshed home page with a new search field front and centre, new resources on reports standards, and a reports portfolio.

While we’re celebrating, it’s a perfect time to acknowledge the work of our former Communications Specialist, Michelle Preston, one of the founders of BCPSLS Central and the principal writer behind the stories of the blog’s first four years. After a year on loan directing PHSA’s Patient Care Quality Office, Michelle has recently moved on to Fraser Health to manage its patient care quality, safety, and injury prevention portfolio. Congratulations, Michelle! We will miss you, but we know you’ll do great things and we look forward to profiling them on the blog.

We would like to extend our deepest gratitude to all the readers, contributors, and supporters who have made BCPSLS Central the resource it is today. The blog is one of the most effective tools we have developed, helping us spread the word about how our community uses BCPSLS to drive improvement and change, and one that we are all very proud of.

Here’s to you and our next five years!

P.S. If you’ve got a story of improvement to tell, please let us know. We’d be honoured to help share it with the world! Please email your ideas to Kim Steger at ksteger@phsa.ca.