Toward Co-productive Learning? The Exchange Network as Experimental Space

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Organizational Learning
• Collaborative Practice

Background:

• Implementing patient and public involvement (PPI) policies in healthcare services and research faces significant challenges.
• Existing toolkits and guidelines for PPI often overlook power asymmetries inherent in research and healthcare collaborations.
• There is a need to address how different stakeholders can negotiate these power dynamics and legitimize diverse forms of knowledge.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present the development of the Exchange Network, an experimental learning space designed to address relational dynamics in healthcare research and quality improvement.
• To explore how diverse stakeholders can engage with and negotiate power asymmetries within collaborative healthcare settings.
• To foster critical reflection on organizational norms and generate new forms of mutuality and care through collaborative learning.

Main Methods:

• The Exchange Network convenes diverse actors including researchers, clinicians, patients, carers, and managers for structured events.
• These events are held at a distance from specific projects, temporarily suspending usual role allocations and pragmatic constraints.
• Action learning techniques are employed to facilitate critical reflection and the generation of a shared 'knowledge space' for dialogue.

Main Results:

• Participants utilized action learning to critically reflect on constraints and power dynamics within healthcare collaborations.
• The Exchange Network created a 'knowledge space' enabling dialogue and the encounter between potentially conflicting forms of knowledge.
• The structured events facilitated collective challenging of organizational norms and fostered capacities for learning and mutuality.

Conclusions:

• The Exchange Network model effectively foregrounds and addresses the relational dynamics crucial for successful PPI in healthcare research and quality improvement.
• By attending to collaboration dynamics, the network enables participants to challenge organizational norms and foster new forms of care and mutual understanding.
• This approach offers a valuable method for enhancing the implementation of PPI and improving healthcare practice through collaborative learning.