Dawn

Research Chair, Knowledge Translation to Patients

Dawn is a professor in a School of Nursing and her research focuses on understanding and assessing how useful knowledge translation interventions are for patients. She actively encourages her research teams, including student trainees, to invite patients and caregivers to participate in research and KT activities as knowledge users and in efforts to encourage shared decision-making. Dawn’s experiences with patient/caregiver-research partnerships have been positive. She believes that patients and caregivers offer valuable insights into the workings of the healthcare system that researchers may not have thought of when project planning. Dawn finds it challenging to obtain research funding for the initial planning stage, which limits the team’s ability to come together to discuss ideas for a project including researchers, patients and caregivers. Nevertheless, she advocates for researchers to include patients/caregivers as partners early on in project planning given her belief that learning how to establish effective research partnerships and teams should be part of a researchers’ learning process. 

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• Impact on Research – Dawn
  In Dawn’s project, engaging patients highlighted just how different the perspective of the patient can be from that of health professionals.
• Skills for Partnership – Dawn
  
• Supports needed – Dawn
  The research process, as well as people’s roles and responsibilities, should be explained from the outset. Dawn thinks this would help prepare everyone for engagement.
• Skills for partnership – Dawn
  Maxime, Cathy and Dawn think the most important skill for patients is being able to share their patient experience
• Relationship building – Dawn
  Connecting with patients and learning more about one another has been helpful for Dawn
• Defining partnerships – Dawn
  Patient engagement can evolve into a full partnership, suggests Dawn
• Developing partnerships – Dawn
  Dawn’s research team finds patient partners by reaching out to colleagues or support groups