Annette’s research group is developing tools and approaches for patient engagement training.

Transcript

So we have different projects, different levels of commitment to patient engagement, as you would expect there are some projects that are incredible and others that are not as strong in patient engagement and sometimes it’s the will, but more important the knowledge about how to do patient engagement. So we do have, aside from the research program, we have a training program where we’re developing different tools to train on patient-oriented research, both for researchers, for graduate students who want to get into the area of patient-oriented research, but also for parents, for youth, and policy makers. So anyone who – any stakeholder that’s interested to be part of patient-oriented research.

So we have a variety of tools we’re developing; we’ve had online webinars, like lunchtime webinars that we have. We have a summer learning series for undergraduate students, they take part in workshops and there’s a lab, so we work in a lab and at the same time they learn some things online but then they see it in action. So we have things for trainees, we have – now we’re working together with the Ontario SPOR Support Unit and Canadian Child Health Clinician Scientist Program (CCHCSP) and ourselves, and I think [organization] as well, is a partner as well for the PORCH Program, which is the Patient-Oriented Research in Child Health Curriculum. So it’s really – because it’s really geared towards child’s health research, using patient-oriented approaches. And these are online modules that are being developed both for researchers as a target, and other modules that are for patients and which will include parents.

So I think these will be very useful because they’re short, they’re very accessible because you could do it at any time, and then we do also have face-to-face workshops that we run as well in different cities across the country that delivers modification of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) workshops on patient-oriented research. So we’re continuing to develop different training opportunities; I think in the future we’re hoping to do more leadership-oriented patient-oriented research training, and also kind of like we have the basics, training about the basic concepts and what it is and how to do it, but we then want to do higher level, more advanced training where you actually use examples and scenarios and kind of see different potential challenges and look through solutions, to maximise engagement. So this is a work in progress, but training is an important piece, that people feel comfortable with the process, understand it and really with all potential stakeholders in mind. So that’s one aspect.

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