This Friday, Healthwatch Essex are celebrating #Red4Research, an annual awareness day that champions the positive impact of research in health, care, and voluntary sectors. In recognition of #Red4Research, Research Officer Beth Pittuck has written a blog series showcasing her most recent research project – Supporting Partnerships. In her final post of the series, Beth outlines the recommendations that were drawn from her research.
Our study contributes to the limited existing research on NHS FT staffs’ views and experiences of participatory methods like co-production. Though the research focused on hospital staffs’ perspectives within a FT, the key recommendations that were produced can be implemented in organisations where staff and patients collaborate to design and develop improvements to services.
Recommendations were drawn from our participants reflections and highlight how staff can be better supported to learn more about participatory methods. They also provide guidance for how organisations can encourage more staff to participate in co-production and service improvement projects. The recommendations are outlined below:
Learning about co-production
1) Developing an organisational definition of co-production: It is important for organisations to produce their own definition of co-production. The definition should outline what co-production is, what it entails, and how staff can utilise this method within their practice to design and improve services.
2) Providing learning resources to teach staff about co-production: Organisations should facilitate a variety of co-production training courses. These could include online and in-person workshops and bite size courses that teach staff about the principles of co-production.
3) Provide opportunities for staff to learn about co-production from other colleagues: Evidence promotes the adoption of a ‘networked environment’ to promote shared learning between staff (Tuurnas, 2021). Facilitating sessions where staff can share their experiences, mistakes and successes gives them the opportunity to provide feedback and learn from others.
4) Clearly highlight to staff the differences between formal and informal co-production: Organisations should inform staff that co-production may consist of both formal and informal activities. Managers should also work with staff to identify where they may be engaging in informal practices in their day-to-day activities and recognise how they can utilise this feedback to influence decision-making processes.
5) Staff should be clearly informed about the benefits of getting involved in co-production: It’s important for organisations to communicate to staff the long-term benefits and outcomes that their involvement in co-production will generate. A service improvement project resulting in a tangible outcome may encourage staffs’ future involvement in co-production projects.
6) Healthcare professionals should recognise and respect knowledge and expertise that patients have gained through accessing services: Organisations should reiterate to staff the importance of supporting patients to share their experiences and utilise their personal experience to co-produce improvements to services.
Supporting staff to get involved in co-production
1) Adjust or tailor co-production activities to accommodate different staffs’ priorities and schedules: When organising meetings, workshops and other sessions as part of a service improvement project, organisers should tailor timings to staffs’ diaries and ensure they are held in an agreed location.
2) Additional support should be provided by managers to ensure that staff feel as though they have a voice in decision-making: Senior staff should foster an environment where all staff feel comfortable to share their perspectives and have a say in decisions made regarding service improvements.
3) Organisations should strive to understand why staff are resistant to change: Staff may experience change fatigue when working in healthcare organisations that consistently experience change (Garside, 2024). By communicating with staff on why they feel resistant, organisations can provide them with the support needed to overcome these feelings.
4) Encourage staff to critically reflect on their practices to promote learning: Mangers should facilitate reflection sessions that encourage staff to think about prior engagements with patients, and involvement in service improvement projects. By critically reflecting, staff can understand what they could have done differently and how they can transfer this knowledge into future co-production projects.
This blog completes the series of posts where I provided an overview of my project, in recognition of #Red4Research 2024. This blog provided a set of recommendations for organisations to consider when encouraging staff to get involved in service improvement projects. There is often still the question of ‘What’s next?’ when it comes to improving staffs’ attitudes towards embedding patient experience and collaborating with patients to improve services. We hope that organisations can utilise our recommendations to inform how they teach staff about the principles of co-production, and support staff to overcome the barriers they face when engaging in a service improvement project.
Beth Pittuck, Research Officer
Reference List:
Garside, P. (2024). ‘Are we suffering from change fatigue?’ BMJ Quality and Safety, 13(2).87
Tuurnas, S. (2021). ‘Skilling and motivating staff for co-production’. In Loeffler, E., and Bovaird, T. (eds). The Palgrave Handbook of Co-Production of Public Services and Outcomes. Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, pp. 491-506.