Patient Partners in Continuing Professional Development

University of British Columbia (UBC) researchers designed a continuing professional development (CPD) module for family physicians incorporating authentic patient engagement and insights gained from patient involvement in undergraduate health professional education. This entailed collaboration between UBC's CPD Office and Patient and Community Partnership for Education. A literature review, environmental scan and interviews with key informants yielded practices for meaningful involvement. These practices were applied to the development of the CPD module on end-of-life care. Patient partners offered fresh perspectives and some CPD providers subsequently reevaluated components of their own practice. Key insights include the value of stakeholder adoption; channels for identifying patients best able to contribute expertise; methods for enabling patient/provider involvement; the importance of feedback mechanisms to patient partners; and recognizing patient contributions. The authors suggest that CPD offices consider the inclusion of patient partners in program planning as an opportunity to pursue continuous quality improvement.

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