TY  - JOUR
A1  - Engler, Jennifer
A1  - Brosse, Franziska
A1  - Dinh, Truc Sophia
A1  - Klein, Astrid-Alexandra
A1  - Brückle, Maria-Sophie
A1  - Petermann, Jenny
A1  - Muth, Christiane
A1  - Mergenthal, Karola
A1  - Akker, Marjan van den
A1  - Voigt, Karen
T1  - Digital participatory workshops with patients and health professionals to develop an intervention for the management of polypharmacy: results from a mixed-methods evaluation and methodological conclusions
T2  - Research involvement and engagement
N2  - Background: In the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous researchers postponed their patient and public involvement (PPI) activities. This was mainly due to assumptions on patients’ willingness and skills to participate digitally. In fact, digital PPI workshops differ from in-person meetings as some forms of non-verbal cues and body language may be missing and technical barriers may exist. Within our project HYPERION-TransCare we adapted our PPI workshop series for intervention development to a digital format and assessed whether these digital workshops were feasible for patients, health care professionals and researchers.
Methods: We used a digital meeting tool that included communication via audio, video and chat. Discussions were documented simultaneously on a digital white board. Technical support was provided via phone and chat during the workshops and with a technical introduction workshop in advance. The workshop evaluation encompassed observation protocols, participants’ feedback via chat after each workshop on their chance to speak and the usability of the digital tools, and telephone interviews on patients’ and health professionals’ experiences after the end of the workshop series.
Results: Observation protocols showed an active role of moderators in verbally encouraging every participant to get involved. Technical challenges occurred, but were in most cases immediately addressed and solved. Participants median rating of their chance to speak and the usability of the digital tool was “very good”. In the evaluation interviews participants reported a change of perspective and mutual understanding as a main benefit from the PPI workshops and described the atmosphere as inclusive and on equal footing. Benefits of the digital format such as overcoming geographical distance, saving time and combining workshop participation with professional or childcare obligations were reported. Technical support was stressed as a pre-condition for getting actively involved in digital PPI.
Conclusions: Digital formats using different didactic and documentation techniques, accompanied by technical support, can foster active patient and public involvement. The advantages of digital PPI formats such as geographical flexibility and saving time for participants as well as the opportunity to prepare and hold workshops in geographically stretched research teams persists beyond the pandemic and may in some cases outweigh the advantages of in-person communication.
KW  - Digital workshops
KW  - Intersectoral care
KW  - Intervention development
KW  - Methods
KW  - Patient and public Involvement
KW  - Patient participation
KW  - Polypharmacy
KW  - Research design
KW  - Stakeholder participation
Y1  - 2022
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/85883
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-858837
SN  - 2056-7529
N1  - Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
N1  - Gefördert durch den Open-Access-Publikationsfonds der Goethe-Universität
N1  - Funding: Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany (BMBF) ; 01GK1906A
N1  - The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
VL  - 8
IS  - 1, art. 52
SP  - 1
EP  - 17
PB  - BioMed Central
CY  - London
ER  -