2026 Patient Experience Award recipients
Alberta Children’s Hospital Family Mentor Program
At the Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary, families whose children faced repeated hospitalizations shared they often felt alone, overwhelmed, and unsure where to turn for emotional or practical support. Many were unaware of the available resources or how to navigate the health system. They sought reassurance and guidance from someone who had lived through a similar experience.
A volunteer peer support model was well received by families but difficult to sustain; many families remained unsupported. The program changed to a formal, paid family mentor model to provide consistent, integrated, peer support to every inpatient family. In the first year, the mentors completed 1,172 family visits – a 554 percent increase over the previous year’s volunteer visits – with 100 percent of families saying they would recommend the program to others.
Goba Care
For many residents of northern Alberta, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, travelling to Edmonton for care is a major undertaking. The experience for Indigenous patients in particular can be marked by financial stress, language and cultural barriers, and isolation. Patients are often required to travel alone, facing complex diagnoses without an advocate and navigating airports and huge urban hospitals while medically fragile.
Goba Care provides mobile, on-the-ground support in Edmonton, bridging the clinical system and home community through navigation, advocacy, cultural connection, and material assistance. The program treats culture as a clinical necessity rather than an optional add-on. Goba Care reduces practical stressors, provides advocacy during critical conversations, and aims to ensure no patient feels lost or alone. The goal is that patients are more engaged in their own care, and more likely to adhere to treatment and follow-up care.
Pediatric Interdisciplinary Neurodevelopmental Clinic (PINC)
Evolving scientific knowledge has shown many factors beyond alcohol consumption during pregnancy are relevant in the assessment and diagnosis of neurodevelopmental conditions such as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. These include genetics, trauma, prematurity, co-existing health conditions, exposure to other drugs, and even social factors like poverty and racism. After wide-ranging engagement that prioritized parents and caregivers, the clinic (PINC) shifted its assessment criteria to widen its clinic focus on understanding each child’s health and disability within their unique story and family history.
The clinic now provides assessments that are individualized, flexible, and focused on helping all children do what matters most to them in their daily lives. The PINC team changed its operational model to resolve fragmented workflows, refine intake procedures, and improve communication with families. Without increasing resources, it can now see and support more than twice as many families than before.
Provincial Pathways
After receiving a diagnosis, patients across Alberta repeatedly shared they lacked clear, consistent information about what to expect on their care journey. They described feeling confused after diagnosis, unsure where to turn, and overwhelmed by conflicting information.
The Provincial Pathways Unit convened patient advisors from across Alberta in a Discovery Day to hear what they needed. From there, a patient pathway template was created, which was then used to create 20 diagnosis-specific patient pathways. Patient advisors shaped the language and design of each of them – as well as the corresponding clinical pathways for providers. Patient advisors challenged medical jargon and helped ensure information is patient-friendly. Now, patients and providers can rely on guidance that matches and was built together. This supports better conversations, shared decision-making, and stronger relationships, and it supports patients to take an active role in their health journey.