News

By Kim Barnhardt

“Let’s chat over coffee” is often the start to a successful meeting and stimulating conversation. OSSU’s World Café Conversation series of three online kaffeeklatsches were a roaring success, with more than 260 unique participants and many repeat visitors providing insights and ideas on patient engagement in research.

Dr. Vasanthi Srinivasan, OSSU’s Executive Director, was eager to create a space where everyone in the patient engagement community could come together to discuss patient engagement issues. It was a logical extension of OSSU’s approach, which brings people together both in person and virtually at Research Days, policy roundtables and more to discuss health system research, patient-oriented research and patient engagement.

“OSSU wanted something more conversational where people could come and discuss issues identified by the community – not patient engagement 101, not a basic offering but a way to look at some issues and challenges that have emerged,”

said Maureen Smith, a long-time OSSU patient partner, Past Chair of the Patient Partner Working Group and a member of OSSU’s Board of Directors. She is also co-lead of the series with Dr. Stuart Nicholls, a scientist at the Methodological & Implementation Research (MIR) Program and with support from Aleisha Fernandes from the Office for Patient Engagement in Research Activities (OPERA) at The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.  

Inspired by the World Café model of conversational collaboration where small tables of people discuss key questions, Maureen and Stuart developed Dr. Srinivasan’s vision of an interactive meeting space where people with common interests – in this case patient engagement in research – could come together to have honest, open conversations about challenges and solutions in patient engagement in research, and how to move forward as the field evolves. They planned a pilot series of three online conversations with an eye to broad representation.

To generate ideas, they used Padlet, an online discussion board, to elicit topics from the community. A major bonus was the platform’s ability to auto translate into a dozen different languages, expanding accessibility for the diverse groups of participants. The ideas were then discussed and shaped by an advisory group before each World Café launched.

“What was important to me was I wanted everyone in that ecosystem to be involved,” said Maureen. “We sometimes talk to researchers and patient partners separately in silos and a big goal was not talking in silos.” Stuart agreed: “Our goal was to have people from every part of the patient engagement community talking to each other: patient partners, patient engagement coordinators and specialists, researchers, clinicians, research administrators, staff, trainees, anyone with an interest.”

And the World Café series was indeed inclusive with participants not only from Ontario and across Canada, but also from Europe, North America and even as far as Africa and Asia.

Participant feedback was overwhelming positive, with people reporting that they felt heard and could share their opinions, attendees reflected the diversity of people affected or interested in the topics, that the café promoted mutual understanding and more.

“We realised that there is a real appetite for this kind of event; people were on board and interested in hearing other perspectives and how they differ,” said Maureen.

Based on the success of the initial pilot series, OSSU will be continuing the World Café series, with dates to be announced in due course.

Read key takeaways from the OSSU World Café pilot series.