On October 19th, 2016, we held a public event to celebrate the formal launch of our Health Experience Canada web site in English and French. This was held at McGill Family Medicine and attended by a wonderful group of about 50 people including patients, caregivers, healthcare professionals, students, sponsors, community organizations, and other researchers. Dr. Howard Bergman provided a brief introduction to highlight the importance of finding ways through research and engagement with patients and community to better understand people’s experiences of illness. There were short presentations by caregiver and clinician research partners, and an overview of the initiative by Dr. Susan Law in addition to the virtual ‘ribbon-cutting’ to open the link to the online module on women’s experiences of breast cancer.
To see the overview of the initiative by Dr. Law, click HERE.
At the reception, we thought it would be fun to share some of the quotes from our interviews with participants about why they participated in the study – which we posted on the walls. A few are presented here:
Parce que pour moi c’est essentiel de s’entraider, c’est essentiel… C’est essentiel d’avoir une conscience sociale
Caregivers need a voice. They need to be heard and caregivers also have to find a place to go listen to those voices
I think it’s basically we know more about Mars than about care giving
Because I feel very strongly that women should have a voice in their treatment
I might help to look at things differently. Maybe they will investigate and search before deciding to go through this, they will find out what they need to know for themselves
Parce que le cancer fait encore beaucoup peur, puis moi je veux changer ça