The fact that everyone was paid contributed to a comfortable and pleasant atmosphere in Emma’s project

Transcript

And also really importantly having some sort of reimbursement honorarium, something that shows that you’re valuing their input. Because I think it’s really great to involve patients, but sometimes patients get involved and they end up getting really involved because they may be very passionate about a certain topic but then they’re not – they’re the only ones who are sitting at a table who are not being compensated for their time. 

So I think that that’s like a very important thing to consider is, you know, if we’re going to do this project do we have funds set aside to acknowledge the time or whatever else it is. You know, if they have a 9-5 job they can’t necessarily come to meetings during 9-5 so is the research team going to kind of partner in a way where they’re flexible just like the patients probably being flexible.

So at the time when I started on the project my – the research coordinator on the project had already known a few of the community members for a while. So it was really – it was a really welcoming space I think for everybody. And I always found the conversations to be pretty comfortable. It was – everyone seemed kind of happy to be on the project, happy to be there. And like I mentioned everyone was being paid to be there so there’s – there isn’t that kind of – because I’ve been in settings where, you know, you’re an unpaid student for example or something like that and you know that in the back of your head and it totally influences the way that you interact. 

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