PMH Success Story: Dr Maria Patriquin
We are proud to call Dr Maria Patriquin, the founder of an innovative health centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a Patient’s Medical Home (PMH) success story. Her creation, the Living Well Integrative Health Center, offers holistic care for individuals and families using a skilled multidisciplinary team and a wide range of services that address the complex and unique needs of individual patients.
The opening of the centre 4 years ago was the culmination of a long-time dream for Dr Patriquin. It enabled her to actualize her vision for healthier attitudes and practices in the provision of primary health care. The centre emphasizes the importance and need for accessibility, continuity, and cooperation between providers to assist patients in reaching their health goals and achieving a sense of well-being, regardless of disease state.
The practitioners embrace a wellness model of care that promotes the role of health surveillance; primary and secondary prevention; health promotion through education and advocacy; positive psychology; integration of physical and mental health; capacity building; and fostering resilience in patients. They consider these values to be at the core of making and maintaining informed and healthy choices.
Dr Patriquin also believes that compassion is at the heart of the therapeutic role of health care providers. She says a model of care that is collaborative and compassionate promotes efficacy, influence, wellness, meaning, and longevity in our professional and personal lives, and it leads to a more engaging and positive experience for patients and providers alike.
In appreciation of Dr Patriquin’s dynamic approach, the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) awarded her a PMH 60/20 Caring and Compassion Grant in 2016. The fact that she did not set out to create a PMH speaks to the universal nature of PMH principles, as Dr Patriquin was recognized by the CFPC for simply seeking to align with best practices in patient-centred care.
The PMH 60/20 Caring and Compassion Grant was created to celebrate the CFPC’s 60th and the Research and Education Foundation (REF)’s 20th anniversaries (the REF is now known as the Foundation for Advancing Family Medicine). It recognizes those who actively take part in the PMH’s mission to “provide and coordinate a comprehensive range of medical and health care services appropriate to the needs of that practice’s patients and the communities it serves.”
To contact the Living Well Integrative Health Center, please visit the PMH in Nova Scotia page.
