From a Patient’s Perspective: Reflections, Ideas and Action Steps to Build Meaningful Patient Engagement

Each of us was drawn to health care for different reasons or motivations. Almost universally though, we share a common commitment to the desired end result: improving care and outcomes for the patients we serve.  Whether you come to the conversation from a practice or education lens, patients are our North Star. 

In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of the patient voice as a part of the care and learning team. The perspective of patients is critical so that systems of care and learning can be designed and evaluated to truly reflect patient goals. Yet, many of us find it difficult to engage patients in meaningful and appropriate ways in our daily work and struggle with the uncomfortable questions we can not answer in isolation, like:

• Have we effectively engaged people and communities served in the design, implementation and evaluation of our interprofessional practice and education initiatives? 
• How does the representation of the patient perspective into our education and practice take into account individual patient experiences and needs, rather than assuming a one-size-fits-all model?
• How can we be critically self-reflective, understand where we have fallen short and fallen back on professional culture and hierarchical systems of care when it comes to serving our patients? 
• How do we identify and work to eliminate barriers to patient engagement, such as unconscious or overt bias, as well as physical, mental, and self-imposed barriers? 
• How can we more meaningfully engage the individuals, families and communities we serve as central, integrated members of our Nexus teams?

To help us reflect on these questions and provide us with actionable insights and recommendations, we will be joined by a panel of the Nexus Summit 2023 Patient Responders. These Patient Responders come from across the nation, with varied experiences and a shared commitment to improving the patient experience by influencing the systems of care and learning around them. They will be participating in Seminars throughout the Nexus Summit and will be synthesizing their observations and reflections to contribute to this conversation. 
Susan Dudley Gold, an editor, graphic designer and author of more than 60 books, has been a patient, patient advocate, peer support facilitator, and advisor in various capacities for more than twenty years and will serve as the panel facilitator. Shelley Cohen Konrad, Director of the Center to Advance Interprofessional Education and Practice at the University of New England and longtime National Center advisor on patient engagement, will co-facilitate.

After participating in this session, attendees will: 

1. Apply lessons learned to reflect critically on their own efforts to engage patients as members of their practice and education teams.
2. Identify one barrier to patient engagement that they have encountered in their own work.
3. Commit to on action they will take at their home institution to further effective, impactful patient engagement in their interprofessional practice and education initiatives (i.e. begin a conversation with their team; invite one patient/ community representative to have a conversation; discuss lessons learned with their own patent advisors to inform continuous improvement of the patient engagement process locally).