Primary healthcare professionals' experience with patient participation in healthcare service development: A qualitative study.

Abstract

How healthcare professionals experience patient participation in health service development impacts its use. This participatory study explores primary healthcare professionals' perceptions of developing health services with patient representatives. Four focus group interviews with primary healthcare professionals (n = 26) were conducted. We analyzed data by applying Braun and Clarke's reflexive thematic analysis. The healthcare professionals perceived having a complementary interprofessional relationship with the patient representatives and regarded them as colleagues. However, the professionals navigated between a position of authority and collaboration, reconciling the need for participation with its challenges, e.g., to identify the representatives' collective representation among their personal experience, to ensure a more evidence-informed result that they and their colleagues would endorse. Regarding patient representatives as colleagues can blur the line between professionals and representatives' positions and functions and further complicate health service development. Our results indicate a need for skilled facilitators to lead the process. This study identifies issues that professionals are uncertain about when collaborating with representatives to develop primary healthcare services; difficulties that professionals must overcome to collaborate constructively with representatives. Our findings can inform healthcare professionals' education about patient participation on all levels. We have suggested topics to address.