Uniting future professionals in occupational and physical therapy, kinesiology, medicine, speech­language pathology, pharmacy, psychology, nursing and social work, the Quebec Health Professional Students' Roundtable aims to formulate and adopt recommendations in order to positively impact Quebec health policy and the work of the Minister for Health and Social Services. Founded in January 2016, the Roundtable brings together future health professionals from across Quebec and acts as a non-hierarchical, inter-professional and democratic forum. Composed of 30 university-level health professional student associations, the Roundtable represents its members to the government and to Quebec society. The FRESQue is an active advocate for the health profession students' vision of a more effective, efficient, just, and accessible healthcare system.

HEALING ENVIRONMENTS

The Quebec healthcare system faces significant challenges in terms of both human resources and the organization of care, which often result in large workloads in the field. The effect of work overload is an important issue for all health professionals and for all stakeholders and partners in the health and social services network. In addition to having deleterious effects, work overload threatens the quality of healing environments and thus the quality of care and services rendered.

Future health professionals want to reflect on this reality and reaffirm the importance of healthy and quality healing environments:

- where professionals can collaborate in an interdisciplinary manner with other actors and partners for the benefit of patients;
- where professionals can provide timely and patient-centered care and services;
- where quality and safety of care are paramount.

On the Agenda : 

- Presentations from expert speakers

- Panel with invited politicians

- Interprofessional cocktail

Lunch is also included for all participants.

 #FRESQue2019

#EnvironnementsSoignants

#HealingEnvironments

There is indeed a growing concern around medical overuse, overdiagnosis and overtreatment, and the place they are taking in our healthcare system. Medical overuse is defined by the Institute of Medicine as "care in the absence of a clear medical basis for use or when the benefit of therapy does not outweigh risks" (BMJ, 2015). A report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information and Choosing Wisely Canada shows that up to 30% of patients receiving one of 8 identified medical interventions had tests, treatments and procedures that are potentially unnecessary (CIHI, 2017).

While trying to comprehend what defines overuse by opposition to the right amount of care needed in a patient centered continuum, this year’s 2018 FRESQue Summit will be a great opportunity for all of us to learn more and act on this high impact subject. How common is medical overuse? What form does it take? How do we monitor it and distinguish the harms from the individual patient benefits? We will try to answer some of these questions while having a broader look at some of the medical overuse administrative effects on the organization of health services, including management of healthcare costs. Recommendations will thus be formulated in the context of the Quebec healthcare system.

Call for Memoirs:

Patient groups, experts in health policy, professional associations, and the general public are invited to send us their recommendations. The summit will be open to all those who wish to participate, and those attendees not sent by our member associations may participate as observers with speaking rights.

An example of a submission can be found here.

All recommendations submitted will be merged into a final document by our research committee, which will also check and add citations and ensure a final common format. The research committee will not actively filter out any recommendations, but may merge similar recommendations in order to improve the efficiency of summit proceedings and the coherence of the final document.

Recommendations are due February 15th and should adhere to the following format:

• A brief introduction of the group or individual submitting the recommendations

• A brief comment on the main concerns in access to primary care that the recommendations seek to address

• A numbered list of recommendations. Each recommendation should be accomppanied by a short paragraph presenting a rationale for the recommendation. Any citations or references used should be listed after the recommendation in which they are used.

• There is no maximum or minimum length, but we encourage concise, clear documents. 

February 23rd, 2017 at McGill University

Speakers: Claude Castonguay & Damien Contandriopoulos

Click here for video of the livestream!

The FRESQue held its second summit on March 11-12 in Montreal.

Our Final Recommendations 2017 were submitted to the Minister of Health and Social Services.

Our speakers included Gaétan Barrette, Minister of Health and Social Services; Dianne Lamarre, PQ Health Critic; Amir Khadir, Québec Solidaire MNA; Eric Latimer, PhD, Health Economist; Dr. Lucie Nadeau, Transcultural Psychiatrist from McGill.

Click here for video excerpts!

The FRESQue held its first summit April 23rd and 24th in Montreal. This summit aimed to encourage reflection on the question of what methods Quebec can adopt to improve access to primary care. During the summit, recommendations based off of the most up-to-date evidence and the diverse experience of the participants were presented, discussed, and adopted.

 The final recommendations (in English) can be found here. 

Our speakers included Gaétan Barrette, Minister of Health and Social Services; Diane Lamarre, PQ Health Critic; Vincent Dumez, Patient Advocate.

Click here for video of Dr. Barrette's speech!

Please contact Jennifer Dahak, VP Financial Partnerships, at info@lefresque.com if you are interested in supporting our inter-professional student initiative.

A partnership and advertisement plan can be made available to you on demand.