Around 1 in 5 Albertans consistently rate their care experience differently — in many cases, poorly.
Portraits of Care · Vol. 01
Health Quality Alberta brings together patients, families, and our partners across healthcare and academia to inspire improvement in patient safety, person-centred care, and health service quality.
These are the stories of the Albertans whose care experience we rarely hear — drawn from real survey data and qualitative interviews, built into personas so that they can be studied, discussed, and designed around.
“Most Albertans have positive healthcare experiences. But a portion — around 20 per cent — consistently rate their experience differently. Their care needs are not being met. Improving care for them will ultimately improve care for everyone.”
— Adapted from Health Quality Alberta’s patient experience research programs across multiple healthcare sectors
Every year, Health Quality Alberta surveys tens of thousands of Albertans about their experience in primary care, emergency departments, continuing care homes, and home and community care. Most report high satisfaction. A meaningful minority — remarkably consistent across settings — does not.
Those rating their care experience poorly are often among our most vulnerable patients. To understand them, we are implementing more advanced surveying methods in combination with qualitative interviews. The data from that work becomes something you can sit with: five interactive, web-based personas that represent these types of patient experiences.
The names and photos in our patient personas are fictional. Their experiences are real.
02 / The five personas
Drawn from survey analysis and qualitative interviews. Click any face to read the full story, listen to the audio excerpts, and compare their experience against the provincial average.
82 · widow · four children · former wheat-farmer
“Some days I feel like a file number. Not a person.”
Read her story
34 · new Canadian · construction worker
“I asked three times what the medicine was for. Nobody answered in a way I could understand.”
Read his story →
29 · first-time mom · enrolled nurse
“They treated my grandmother’s medicine like it was a joke. I left and didn’t go back.”
Read her story →
21 · camp worker · brother, son
“I waited eight hours. Then I walked out before anyone called my name.”
Read his story →
58 · daughter · caregiver to her father
“I’m not the patient. But I’m the one holding it all together. Nobody ever asks how I am.”
Read her story →03 / Method
We begin with Health Quality Alberta’s province-wide patient experience surveys — primary care, emergency, continuing care, home care, and more. Tens of thousands of Albertans tell us what their care felt like, in their own words and on a consistent, validated scale.
Then our research leads conduct qualitative interviews with Albertans whose care experience sits outside the positive majority. These long conversations expose the patterns a survey can only gesture at.
Survey signal and interview narrative are combined into an evidence-informed persona — a fictional Albertan whose situation, journey, frustrations, and hopes represent a real cluster of experience in our data.
Personas become teaching tools for clinicians, planning tools for policymakers, and conversation starters for patients and families. Print the card. Quote the pull-out. Play the audio in your next team meeting.
04 / What this is for
Use personas as a teaching tool at grand rounds, quality huddles, and orientation. Each persona ships with discussion questions, audio excerpts you can play in a meeting, and a one-page printable brief.
See Marguerite’s teaching brief →Each persona connects back to FOCUS on Healthcare data — so the story you just read can be traced to the measures, regions, and populations behind it. Humanize the numbers in your next briefing.
Open FOCUS on Healthcare ↗If a persona sounds familiar, you are not alone. These stories were built to make space for the experiences that usually don’t make it into a survey result. Share the one that looks like you.
Engage with Health Quality Alberta →We believe humanizing the data through personas can be a valuable teaching and quality improvement tool — for clinicians across Alberta, and for the policymakers accountable for funding, planning, and measuring integrated healthcare.