Browsing by Author "Houle, Sherilyn"

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Appendix to "Characteristics, predictors, and reasons for regulatory body disciplinary action in health care: A scoping review"
(Journal of Medical Regulation, 2022-01) Foong-Reichert, Esther Ai-Leng; Fung, Ariane; Carter, Caitlin A.; Houle, Sherilyn; Grindrod, Kelly
In this appendix to the manuscript "Characteristics, predictors, and reasons for regulatory body disciplinary action in health care: A scoping review”, the studies included in the scoping review are summarized.
Development and Testing of a Framework for the Assessment of Health-Related Risks Among Travellers by Pharmacists in Ontario
(University of Waterloo, 2019-12-18) Fernandes, Heidi; Houle, Sherilyn
As pharmacists move away from traditional dispensary roles and towards more clinical services, a therapeutic realm that pharmacists are exploring is travel medicine. However, travel medicine can be challenging to beginners in the field. Despite an expansion in scope in December 2016 allowing pharmacists in Ontario, Canada, to administer a broader range of vaccines including many indicated for travel, the uptake of these services by pharmacists has been slow. Key reasons include a lack of confidence in travel medicine knowledge and challenges integrating the service into existing workload. To assist with identifying patients who may be manageable by pharmacists without additional travel medicine training, versus those who may benefit from referral, we developed and validated a clinical practice framework. A panel of experts, comprised of physicians and pharmacists holding a Certificate in Travel HealthTM from the International Society of Travel Medicine, generated the initial content on information gathering and assessing risk in a travelling patient. The initial list of 114 items was then judged by the panel to remove non-essential items, resulting in 64 items proceeding to content validation, organized into 5 ‘W’ domains: Who, What, Where, When, and Why. Each item was ranked by the experts according to its relevancy, resulting in an Average Content Validity Index of 0.91. The resulting framework was titled “The 5W Approach to Travel Risk Identification.” This clinical practice framework is the first published assessment tool for travel medicine tailored for pharmacy’s scope of practice that has been content validated. The tool allows pharmacists inexperienced in travel medicine to collect information required to use their professional judgement when assessing travelling patients as either high-risk (requiring a referral to a travel medicine specialist) or low-risk. With the aim of supporting pharmacists to be more confident in caring for travelling patients and increasing their involvement in travel medicine, this framework was then piloted in 8 pharmacies in Ontario, Canada, from March to August 2019. Pharmacists completed pre- and post-test phase surveys to determine the utility of the framework. Pharmacists reported that the framework is simple to use and provides structure for interactions with travelling patients. However, it may not be as beneficial for those with a higher level of travel medicine expertise than the average pharmacist, and improvements to its design were suggested. This feasibility study is the first to trial the use of a validated risk assessment framework for pharmacists to use when providing care to travelling patients. To further understand its potential in community pharmacies, this work will be further expanded to pharmacists across Canada.
Professional regulation in healthcare: Exploring trends, predictors, and the disciplinary action process for health professionals in Canada
(University of Waterloo, 2024-09-03) Foong-Reichert, Esther; Grindrod, Kelly; Houle, Sherilyn
Background: Health professionals in Canada are governed by provincial regulatory bodies, whose mandate is to protect the public. Regulatory bodies license and register professionals, and handle complaints and disciplinary action processes when warranted. In recent years, jurisdictions internationally and in Canada have been undergoing regulatory reform. More research is needed on current processes to inform future improvements. Objectives: The overall goal of this thesis was to describe the disciplinary action process for health professionals in Canada. Methods: This thesis is comprised of five studies. The first study was a scoping review to describe the research on disciplinary action outcomes for health professionals, and to describe the research on characteristics or predictors of health professionals subject to disciplinary action. The next three studies reviewed disciplinary action outcomes for Canadian pharmacists, dentists, and nurse practitioners, respectively. Characteristics of professionals subject to disciplinary action were also studied. The fifth study sought to compare and contrast disciplinary action processes across professions and jurisdictions in Canada and to describe regulatory body perspectives of the disciplinary action process. Results: The scoping review found that most research focuses on physicians, originates from the USA, and has been conducted from 2010 – 2020. A variety of demographic factors and predictors of disciplinary action have been studied, including gender, age, years in practice, practice specialty, license type/profession, previous disciplinary action, board certification, and performance on licensing examinations. The reviews of pharmacist, dentist, and nurse practitioner disciplinary found differences in reasons for disciplinary action between professions. All professions had low rates of disciplinary action, with nurse practitioners being the lowest. In the final study, interviews with regulatory bodies identified possible explanations for the differences observed in the reviews of disciplinary action. Conclusion: This thesis has generated new knowledge about disciplinary action for Canadian health professionals. This research will guide regulators and other stakeholders in improving health regulation and ensuring protection of the public.