The Views of Professionals on Patients’ Value Co-creation Activities in Public Healthcare

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to study how healthcare professionals conceive patients’ value co-creation activities and what kinds of organizational factors they perceive to support or hinder value co-creation. The study is based on an empirical examination of public healthcare organizations (HCOs) in Lithuania and is qualitative in nature. We carried out semi-structured face-to-face interviews with doctors and used focus groups with nurses. Our results indicate that doctors and nurses recognize patients’ value-creating activities quite well both in the service encounter and in the patients’ own contexts. The significance of social interaction and virtual communication was emphasized by the professionals. However, they had difficulties in taking the patients’ perspective in the actual care. They highlighted patients’ compliance to care plans and orders, which reflects traditional professionalism and power asymmetry. Lack of resources, heavy workload, bureaucracy, poor communication, and unsatisfactory managerial capabilities were regarded as the main factors restricting value co-creation.