PregnancyVancouver Website a Transformative Tool for Physicians, Patients
A new website has been designed to serve as a resource for all things related to maternity care. PregnancyVancouver.ca, created as part of the EASI Maternity Care Project, covers the journey from preconception to newborn.
“The idea was to create a one-stop information hub that both patients and providers can access in real time,” says Dr. Ashnoor Nagji, Physician Lead for EASI.1 Dr. Nagji, who is also the Chair of the Primary Care Maternity Committee that leads the project, took the time to outline this valuable resource shortly after its launch. She’s excited that it will provide reliable, up to date, evidence-based information, all in one convenient location.
Valuable Resource for Doctors
Dr. Nagji is hopeful that physicians will utilize the website when counselling patients and believes that there are two easy ways for them to do so.
Firstly, she believes that clinicians can use the website to send information to their patients ahead of important visits.
“We would love to see them send their patients links in that context,” she says. “In order to facilitate this, we have aligned sections of the website with various stages in the journey.”
Secondly, clinicians can use the website to facilitate real-time learning during patient visits.
“If I’m with a patient discussing, for example, prenatal genetic testing, I can bring up that portion of the website and use an infographic as a teaching point,” Dr. Nagji explains. “This is particularly valuable with patients who have different language requirements or who are visual learners.”
Helps Patient Avoid ‘Dr. Google’
The website also serves as a user-friendly resource for patients looking to gain information between visits.
“If a patient has a question at 3AM, this provides them a resource that prevents them from going down the rabbit hole of Dr. Google,” she says. “We’d like to see this become the go-to place for anyone in Vancouver and beyond who has questions. We’re hoping it goes viral and starts making a large impact.”
Compiling Resources a Rigorous Undertaking
The website’s format involves leading visitors to other, pre-existing resources that relate to maternity care. With an almost endless amount of such resources existing online, the process of prioritizing and vetting required a large effort. To get it right the committee enlisted help from a wide range of stakeholders.
“We had what we called a ‘Broader Consultation Group’, which we were super excited about because it included patients, Allied Health, doulas, mental health professionals, and a Naturopathic clinician,” explains Dr. Nagji. “We asked them to tell us about gaps in information that they were noticing.”
This first phase netted over 800 resources, which risked overwhelming the visitor. This number was slimmed by a ‘Clinical Consultation Group’ that included an Obstetrician, Midwife and a Family Physician who considered the quality and accuracy of the submissions.
As Dr. Nagji explains, the list was further condensed through a final round of vetting.
“We enlisted the help of a wide variety of stakeholders, including Mama bloggers, patients, and Allied Health clinicians. We used a game style format, kind of like Wordle meets Wheel of Fortune, allowing these stakeholders to rank their favorite sites while hopefully sparking some play and joy in the process.”
Inclusivity a Priority for Website
Dr. Nagji says that it was important for the website to be culturally sensitive and empowering, so the committee used a lens of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.
“What about immigrants who have just come to Canada?” she asks. “What about people who live on the Downtown Eastside? People with unintended pregnancies? We wanted to ensure that we heard those voices and that these people felt connected, that they too saw themselves on the site.”
She explains that images and infographics were chosen deliberately.
“We opted to be mindful in choosing real time photography that showcases actual providers in Vancouver, patients from a range of backgrounds and where possible, offer resources in different languages,” says Dr. Nagji.
Maternity a Holistic Journey
According to Dr. Nagji, it’s important to be mindful that health is a holistic journey of the mind, body, and spirit. She hopes that this will be reflected on the site.
“Sometimes medicine offers such a stark, biomedical lens,” she notes. “In fact, there are many elements involved. What better place than maternity to bring that to light?”
Lightening the Load on Physicians
If pregnancyvancouver.ca can relieve a small amount of the stress that doctors feel each and every day, Dr. Nagji will consider it a win.
“There are so many demands on physicians,” she says. “We’re constantly working to go harder and faster, to stretch wider and do more.”
She believes that whatever resources can make the work easier for health care providers are well worth their while.
“It’s great when we can come to work and feel joyful and reconnect to the spark that motivated us to choose this path in our lives,” she says.
Visit pregnancyvancouver.ca today and explore the carefully chosen and grouped resources it provides.
Cited Sources
1 Direct communication with Dr. Ashnoor Nagji
