Following on from a report in the September 2022 issue of HCQ’s e-Alert, yet another paper by the research team of Ruth Cox, Director of Occupational Therapy at QEII Jubilee Hospital and a PhD candidate at Griffith University; consumer co-researchers, Elizabeth Miller and Bernadette Tanner; Associate Professor Melissa Kendall; and Professor Matthew Molineux, has just been published in the Australian Health Review. It’s called Learning and development needs for successful staff and consumer partnerships on healthcare quality improvement committees: a co-produced cross-sectional online survey.
Full Reference: Australian Health Review, Online Early https://doi.org/10.1071/AH22266
Elizabeth, who is a consumer co-researcher said “in this study, we conducted a learning and development needs analysis of quality improvement (QI) capabilities for staff and consumers on partnership committees at an Australian metropolitan HHS. We compared their self-rated responses against capability importance and performance which demonstrated their learning needs. We also investigated whether the number of years of partnership experience influenced the ratings and which learning strategies or methods were preferred by both groups”.
The major findings of this research were that:
- The Capability Development Framework (shown below) is a useful tool to guide learning and development for successful QI partnerships.
- Staff and consumers should continuously develop QI partnership capabilities together, and through multiple learning approaches.
- Increased exposure to innovative co-design strategies is needed to enhance capabilities and influence on organisational systems and policies.
- Sharing power and leadership was a high learning need.
- Self-reflection is very important, but it was not recognised by staff and consumers as a preferred learning strategy, so this needs more research.
This learning and development needs analysis provides direction for effective design of education and support programs.
If you would like more information and/or a copy of the paper and framework, please contact Ruth Cox via ruth.cox@health.qld.gov.au
Read the full Capability Development Framework, including the capability descriptions- https://www.publish.csiro.au/AH/acc/AH22266/AH22266_AC.PDF
Additionally, you can go to these links to get a free open access copy of the scoping review and eDelphi study related to this research project.