A qualitative evaluation of participants' experiences of using co‐design to develop a collective leadership educational intervention for health‐care teams

• DOI: 10.1111/hex.13002
• Publication Date: 2020-01-30T17:53:45Z
• Authors: Kirsten Siig Pall...; Lisa Rogers; Sabrina Anjara; Aoife De Brún; Eilish McAuliffe
• Keywords: Patient Care Team; implementation science; Medicine (General); Health Personnel; 4. Education; 05 social sciences; 16. Peace & justice; health services research; Research Personnel; quality improvement; Feedback; Leadership; 03 medical and health sciences; R5-920; 0302 clinical medicine; 0502 economics and business; Humans; participatory design; co‐design; Public aspects of medicine; RA1-1270; Original Research Papers; qualitative research

AbstractIntroductionCo‐design involves stakeholders as design partners to ensure a better fit to user needs. Many benefits of involving stakeholders in design processes have been proposed; however, few studies have evaluated participants’ experience of co‐design in the development of educational interventions. As part of a larger study, health‐care professionals, researchers and patients co‐designed a collective leadership intervention for health‐care teams. This study evaluated their experiences of the co‐design process.MethodsSemi‐structured interviews were conducted with individuals (n = 10) who took part in the co‐design workshops. Interviews were audio‐recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically.ResultsFour key themes were identified from the data: (a) Managing expectations in an open‐ended process; (b) Establishing a positive team climate; (c) Focusing on frustrations—challenging but informative; and (d) Achieving a genuine co‐design partnership.ConclusionsThe development of a positive team climate is essential to the co‐design process. Organizers should focus on building strong working relationships from the beginning to enable open discussion. Organizers of co‐design should be conscious of establishing and maintaining a genuine partnership where participants are involved as equal partners and co‐creators. This can be done through the continuous use of feedback to allow participants to influence the workshop directions, and through limiting researcher domination. Lastly, co‐design can be daunting, but organizers can positively impact participants’ experience by acknowledging the emergent nature of the process in order to reduce participant apprehension, thereby limiting the barriers to participation.