* The following was accepted for presentation at Collaborating Across Borders: An American-Canadian Dialogue on Interprofessional Health Education on October 24-26, 2007. The session will be presented on October 26, 2007 by Cathy Risdon.
"Lessons from the PIER Project: Recommendations to Facilitate Use of Participatory Action Research to Study Interprofessional Education and Collaboration"
The following is a description of the focus of the presentation by Cathy Risdon.
"Lessons from the PIER Project: Recommendations to Facilitate Use of Participatory Action Research to Study Interprofessional Education and Collaboration"
The purpose of the PIER Project (a Process Oriented Approach to Enhancing Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Relationship Centered Care) is to demonstrate the application of a relationship-centred approach to collaborative practice and interprofessional learning involving three practice sites within the McMaster University Health Sciences network. The
assumption underlying this project is that organizational culture can be thought of as the incremental accumulation and transmission of routine, often taken for granted practices. Culture change, therefore, may result from interventions designed to either inquire into routine practice and/or perhaps encourage organizations to reconsider what was previously taken without question. To conduct organizational inquiry and provide support for potential changes in practice within the two primary care settings and one long term care facility, a modified participatory action research (PAR) approach was utilized.
In this presentation we will describe the principles of our modified PAR, and explore the merits of it's increasing use in health research. We will then describe the challenges we experienced explaining the use of PAR to both the ethics review board and to the participants in our community practice settings. Recommendations will be shared to facilitate improved understanding of PAR and more importantly, to enable other researchers to overcome challenges of the ethics process and of obtaining consent amongst complex, large existing health care teams. Relevant literature, including recommendations from Khanlou & Peter, (2005) will be offered to further support the strategies we will share.
* The following were accepted for presentation at “Practice Makes Perfect” International Conference 2007: Education of Health Professionals in Community, Clinical and Simulated Settings in Vancouver, November 4-7, 2007. Both sessions will be presented on Tuesday November 6, 2007 by Elizabeth Steggles and Leah Dix.
i. The PIER Project: A Support Model Utilizing "Coach" and "Champion" Pairs
ii. The PIER Project: Use of Genograms to Understand Practice Cultures
The following is a brief description of the presentations by Elizabeth Steggles and Leah Dix.
i. The PIER Project: A Support Model Utilizing "Coach" and "Champion" Pairs
The purpose of this participatory action project is to demonstrate the application of a relationship-centred approach to collaborative practice and interprofessional learning at three practice sites within the McMaster University Health Sciences network. To facilitate the research process at each site, unique roles of "Coach" and "Champion" have been developed. Evaluation of these roles is an integral component of the project and is ongoing through review of "self reports" and "journals" maintained for the duration of the project.
ii. The PIER Project: Use of Genograms to Build Practice Cultures
The purpose of this participatory research project is to understand behaviours in order to enhance practice cultures. An innovative evaluation tool, the practice genogram (McIlvain et al., 1998), is used to both evaluate and facilitate change. The practice genogram, a variation of the family genogram, is a pictorial representation of the relationships amongst team members. The genograms, constructed by trained observers, are shared with each site to facilitate increased understanding of team interactions and collaboration.