Episode 0: The Introduction
The transcript for our prologue episode!
Welcome to our prologue episode of our new show, As PER Usual: A Podcast for Practical Patient Engagement. In this episode, co-hosts Anna Chudyk, Bryn Robinson, and Roger Stoddard introduce the format and plan for sharing the results of a recent research study on patient engagement through the world of podcasting!
Transcript
Anna: Hello! My name is Anna Chudyk, and I am a Canadian patient-oriented researcher. This means that I am passionate about research that focuses on patient and caregiver identified priorities and outcomes and engages patients and caregivers as active members of the research team.
Bryn: My name is Bryn Robinson, and I was one of the research participants in Anna and Roger’s study. I work for a healthcare authority on the east coast of Canada, and I love sharing science and engaging people in research.
Roger: My name is Roger Stoddard, and I am a longstanding patient partner with Horizon Health, out of the province of New Brunswick.
Anna: And we are the co-hosts of As PER Usual - a podcast that explores the current state of patient engagement in Canadian research, and how to make it better. All of the views expressed here are our own.
Bryn: For those of you unfamiliar with the term, patient engagement involves the formation of meaningful research collaborations between patients, caregivers, and researchers. It reconceptualizes the traditional role of the patient and caregiver as research participant to that of an active member of the research team. The patients and caregivers that are involved in these research partners are commonly referred to as patient partners.
Anna: We developed this podcast as an offshoot of a study in which myself, Roger, and the rest of our research team brought together 30 Canadian health researchers and patient partners to reflect on the current and preferred future states of patient engagement in research through a series of workshops. Through their discussions, workshop participants unearthed 10 “targetable areas” that warrant focus as patient engagement in research continues to develop and grow within Canada.
These targetable areas include:
Integration across systems;
Academic culture;
Engagement networks;
Compensation;
Grants, funding and other infrastructure;
Awareness;
Diversity;
Training, education, and guidelines;
Engagement processes; and,
Evaluation and impact.
Bryn: In each episode, we will dive into one of these targetable areas in depth, through conversations with health researchers and patient partners about their publications and experience with a given episode’s topic.
Through these conversations, our goal is to promote critical reflection and provide practical tips for better patient engagement and to create a “community of practice” that will empower listeners to begin making changes in the system.
Roger: Being a patient partner incorporates developing a relationship between the researcher and the patient, and the patient themselves.
Every patient brings a series or a set of tools to the table. I don’t want any patient to ever think that they couldn’t be an asset to healthcare, and in my opinion, being a longstanding patient, I’ve always felt that I needed to give back. It’s our hospital, it’s our facilities, and we have that knowledge and that experience from being from the inside. I think it’s a strong potential to help researchers to navigate and help develop better policy when it comes to the health research. Thank you.
Anna: If you are a health researcher, want to become actively involved in health research, or generally interested in how research can shape health, well-being, and healthcare, this is the podcast for you! Please subscribe to our podcast on our Substack (asperusual.substack.com) if you would like to be notified when we post new content. We plan to start recording new episodes in the New Year (so 2023).
In the meantime, do reach out to us via email or in the comments section of our Substack if you’d like to join the conversation as one of our episode guests or have any questions or comments about this podcast. Our emails are Anna.asPERusual@gmail.com, bryn.asPERusual@gmail.com, and rogerstodda@gmail.com.
And as always, please remember - “Let’s make patient engagement the standard, or as PER usual”.