Wendy believes that patients have expertise about needs that researchers may be lacking
Transcript
Interviewer: And similar to my previous question what kind of skills or attributes do you think that community members need to be involved in partnerships?
So I think that the skills – like when I think about the community members that I work with I think that – and this maybe is really specific to working with indigenous people but part of the skills or the attributes or the knowledge that I would want to see and that I think is important for them is for them to know that what they have to say really matters, that they do have expertise, that their expertise is actually far greater than the outside researcher’s expertise who comes into their community and I think that’s really important for them to know that their voice – that they have a lot to offer, that actually we can’t make any difference to their health and interventions to improve their health if we don’t hear their voice; so I think that’s the main thing is that – like I don’t think they need to understand all the research methods and you know all the details of those skills; and that is – there’s a lot of knowledge there, that expertise there, but I don’t think they need to know that they – I think it’s really–.
I mean I think that they need to if they want to know it and they need to understand that there’s a process and systematic processes and all those things, but the most important thing I think is that for people to understand that their voice matters and that they do. They are the experts and what they have to say is important and that it will be considered by the researcher. So back to what is the expertise that the researcher needs or the attributes and that is really listening and hearing not just giving lip service to get that patient on the research team so that you can say that you’ve got a patient participation, but actually listening to what they say and incorporating it, you know, that’s where the combining the patient’s voice with the research expertise. That is the researcher’s – that’s a skill that needs to come from the researcher, and that’s not easy either because you often have really – you know you’ve got your own ideas when you’re going in to do research on how you think the research is going to go, but then now you’ve got this other voice.
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