Annual Report 2025 – 2026 Action

This year, action means people working in healthcare are seeing real improvements in their workplaces. 

Those improvements are possible because health employers, unions, Doctors of BC, the Ministry of Health, WorkSafeBC, and SafeCare BC are working together to strengthen occupational health and safety.

When we launched SWITCH BC, we committed to practical change — not reports that sit on shelves, but tools that show up in workplaces. In 2025-2026, that commitment became real in new and visible ways for health workers and physicians across British Columbia.

Violence prevention was a clear call to act with our partners. In February 2026, we launched the updated Provincial Violence Prevention Curriculum (PVPC) eLearning course provincewide. We thank Island Health for piloting the course and helping us refine and strengthen it before rolling it out across the province. The course reflects today’s realities — more frequent incidents and more complex care environments — and introduces real work scenarios. Health workers told us they wanted practical skills they could use immediately. Early feedback shows new confidence in de-escalation and safer responses. We also completed and expanded access to a dedicated physician course, introduced short, accessible microlearnings, and adapted de-escalation tools that all teams in healthcare can use.

In community clinics, physicians and medical office staff continue to tell us they are stretched. Our Community Physician Health and Safety program responded with hands-on clinic assessments, expanded portal resources, and new de-escalation supports designed specifically for medical office staff. Through our partnership with Doctors of BC and the Ministry of Health, this de-escalation work has been so effective that we are now extending training to post-secondary students, helping them enter the workforce better prepared to support community physicians. Demand for another pillar of the program, in-person clinic assessments, exceeded our annual targets. Physicians shared that these services reduce administrative burden while strengthening safety culture — allowing them to focus more fully on patient care.

For Joint Occupational Health and Safety Committees (JOHSCs), the OHS Resource Centre is making day-to-day work easier and more consistent. Committees across health authorities are using the platform to track meetings, recommendations, and follow-up actions. Behind every statistic are frontline workers and employer representatives working to prevent injuries and improve health and safety conditions. Our role is to support their work with simple tools and clarity of reporting.

Psychological health and safety (PHS) remains one of the most urgent challenges in healthcare. This year, we moved from conversation to concrete tools. The PHS Toolkit for JOHSCs pilot gives committees practical resources to address real workplace stressors. At the same time, we advanced foundational work to measure progress across the system — because what gets measured can be improved.

To our Board, Technical Advisory Committee, and partners — thank you for your steady guidance. To our staff — your dedication to service and responsiveness drives this work forward every day. And to the health workers and physicians who test our tools, share feedback, and continue to care for others under pressure — this work is for you.

Action, for us, means acting with our partners and caring for the people who care for us.

Victoria Schmid
SWITCH BC, CEO