Participatory approach works

doi:10.1136/bmj.39493.439421.1F

BMJ 2008;336:405-406 (23 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.39493.439421.1F

Letters

User involvement

Participatory approach works

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Fudge et al report that users were not involved in definingcategories or criteria for their involvement in the stroke programmeon which this published ethnography is based.¹

In our experience, user involvement, and research about userinvolvement, requires and benefits from a participatory approach.²This fosters congruence between the intentions of the work andthe methods used. For our participatory research project weused a peer research model involving refugees and asylum seekersin Irish primary care.³

Five community representatives were active from the outset inshaping the research aims and objectives, co-designing researchmaterials, doing fieldwork, and co-analysing collected data.The community representatives also defined criteria for evaluatingtheir involvement.

They characterise their involvement as transformative for themselvesand the wider community. They describe themselves as mediatorsand speak of themselves as a link between worlds of the Irishhealth service and their local networks. They say that . . . [Full text of this article]

Anne MacFarlane, lecturer in primary care¹, Mary O’Reilly-de Brún, director², Tomas de Brún, director²

¹ Department of General Practice, National University of Ireland, Galway, Republic of Ireland, ² Centre for Participatory Strategies, Clonbur, Galway

anne.macfarlane@nuigalway.ie

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Assessing the promise of user involvement in health service development: ethnographic study: Nina Fudge, Charles D A Wolfe, and Christopher McKevitt
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