COVER STORY COLLABORATION Partners in health T Small-town cooperation that’s big on patient care B y M ari -L en D e G uzMan MARI-LEN DE GUZMAN is the editor of Canadian Chiropractor magazine. She has worked in publishing for 20 years and has been editor of several business and professional magazines. You may contact her at mdeguzman@ annexweb.com. 18 Canadian Chiropractor February 2017 www.canadianchiropractor.ca Photo: Petrolia Chiropractic he town of Petrolia, Ont. – just outside Sarnia – may have got its name from its reputation as a pioneer of the oil industry in North America, but the innovative efforts of its local doctors are making a mark in the health care realm. With a population of less than 6,000, Petrolia’s Central Lambton Family Health Team is the community’s go-to for varied primary care services. And thanks to interprofessional, collaborative work that exists among health care practitioners in town, residents are able to access other needed health services outside the family health team more expediently. “There’s been a general change in collaborative care in medicine and sharing care and working at different people’s skillsets,” explains Dr. John Butler, a family physician at the Central Lambton Family Health Team. Butler began his medical career in 2001, at a time when family doctors typically had full autonomy over their pa-tients’ medical care, and extensive collaboration with other health providers was not the norm. The evolution in health care through the 21st century, however, has been moving toward interprofessional collaboration and patient-centred care. Many of today’s medical practitioners are beginning to recognize and adapt to these changes. “Over time, we began to learn that there’s more enhanced skills in many different areas. I was very reluctant to sup-port nurse practitioners 15 years ago, but now they are part of our collaborative care, and I fully support and work with them,” says Butler, who in 2015 received the Outstanding Physician Award from Bluewater Health, the main hospital Dr. John Butler (left) confers with chiropractor Dr. Lisa Thompson, who takes on patient referrals from family doctors in the community. system serving the Sarnia-Lambton area. Patient outcomes have also generally been satisfactory, comments Dr. Firas Al-Dhaher, also a family physician at Central Lambton Family Health Team. For example, he and Butler note patients with low-back pain and other musculoskeletal issues whom they have referred to the chiropractors at Petrolia Chiropractic are reporting good outcomes. “Quite a bit of our patients are blue-collar workers – farmers, truck drivers – they do a lot of manual labour that expose them to musculoskeletal pathology,” Al-Dhaher says. “Knowing what approach those chiropractors do, I feel comfortable sending my patients to them so they can get their early onset assessments, and then I can follow up with them.”
Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor February 2017: Page 18
