Wendy realized that she doesn’t always need to take the lead and can be guided by community partners when working together
Transcript
Oh well – yeah so one of them, and this didn’t happen for any reason. I don’t believe it was an intentional reason but you know I travelled to the community for this meeting with all my briefcases and forms and everything else and arriving and, “Oh are we supposed to have a meeting? No we have to go. We have 20 minute what would you like?” and then that was it; and so you know was that a negative experience, not really but it was frustrating from a research productivity level. But we laughed and ‘yeah well okay 20 minutes, well what can we do’, okay we’ll cut to the chase because I had some lists to tick off that I had done. Yeah I think that that’s – and then another frustrating thing – and so again it’s just that path. That path isn’t – I’m not the one setting the path, I’m the follower, I’m just to trying to facilitate the path a little bit but I’m really not cutting the trail. So then another – you know again from a research perspective is that I … well it just doesn’t go as planned.
Some researchers also mentioned that the time commitment to build relationships with patient and community partners ended up taking longer than anticipated (e.g., traveling to meet with patient partners in person). One researcher acknowledged that it’s best to plan ahead and incorporate the time commitment for patient engagement as part of the research plan and timeline.
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- Measuring Impact of Partnership – WendyIn her work with Indigenous partners, Wendy believes it’s important to ask the community about the change they would like to see
- Improving Patient Care and Experiences – WendyWendy realized that there is a lack of trust in Western research by Indigenous communities
- Challenging Experiences – WendyWendy realized that she doesn’t always need to take the lead and can be guided by community partners when working together
- Looking forward – WendyFrom her experience, Wendy highlights the need to adapt research knowledge to Indigenous realities.
- Advice to others – WendyNot presuming they know what’s best for communities, is an important starting point for researchers says Wendy
- Skills for partnership – WendyWendy believes that patients have expertise about needs that researchers may be lacking
- Relationship building – Wendy (2)In Indigenous communities, Wendy feels that having a continuous and local presence is necessary
- Relationship building – WendyWhen engaging community partners, Wendy says to expect that timelines may not go as planned
- Defining partnerships – Wendy (2)Partners or community partners are the terms that Wendy uses to describe the people she works with in the community
- Defining partnerships – WendyWendy constantly reaches out to the Indigenous community she is working with for input