Collaborating with consumer and community representatives in health and medical research in Australia: results from an evaluation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Objective</p> <p>To collaborate with consumer and community representatives in the <it>Alcohol and Pregnancy Project </it>from 2006-2008 <url>http://www.ichr.uwa.edu.au/alcoholandpregnancy</url> and evaluate researchers' and consumer and community representatives' perceptions of the process, context and impact of consumer and community participation in the project.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We formed two reference groups and sought consumer and community representatives' perspectives on all aspects of the project over a three year period. We developed an evaluation framework and asked consumer and community representatives and researchers to complete a self-administered questionnaire at the end of the project.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Fifteen researchers (93.8%) and seven (53.8%) consumer and community representatives completed a questionnaire. Most consumer and community representatives agreed that the process and context measures of their participation had been achieved. Both researchers and consumer and community representatives identified areas for improvement and offered suggestions how these could be improved for future research. Researchers thought consumer and community participation contributed to project outputs and outcomes by enhancing scientific and ethical standards, providing legitimacy and authority, and increasing the project's credibility and participation. They saw it was fundamental to the research process and acknowledged consumer and community representatives for their excellent contribution. Consumer and community representatives were able to directly influence decisions about the research. They thought that consumer and community participation had significant influence on the success of project outputs and outcomes.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Consumer and community participation is an essential component of good research practice and contributed to the <it>Alcohol and Pregnancy Project </it>by enhancing research processes, outputs and outcomes, and this participation was valued by community and consumer representatives and researchers. The National Health and Medical Research Council in Australia expects researchers to work in partnership and involve consumer and community representatives in health and medical research, and to evaluate community and consumer participation. It is important to demonstrate whether consumer and community participation makes a difference to health and medical research.</p

Clinical utility of predictors of return-to-work outcome following work-related musculoskeletal injury

Clinical expertise is one source of evidence that is generally under-utilised in the development of an evidence-base in rehabilitation. The current study aimed to incorporate this valuable clinical expertise in determining the utility of multiple predictors of return-to-work outcome following injury. Methods Following systematic review of the rehabilitation literature and review, a total of 85 predictors were evaluated for clinical relevance by an expert panel of rehabilitation practitioners (n = 12). Each predictor was rated according the importance of the predictor in rehabilitation, its potential for modification and its classification into one of seven broad areas. In addition, practitioners were asked to provide a rationale as to why the predictor was important to rehabilitation. Analyses were conducted using inter-rater agreement statistics and text analysis. Results Predictors that were most commonly reviewed in the literature were not considered to be of greatest clinical utility, according to the current sample. From the total predictor set, only nine predictors were identified as clinically useful (i.e., both highly important and highly modifiable). Text analysis of the qualitative data revealed that these nine predictors highlighted the significance of time, context and engagement in rehabilitation practice. Conclusion In the current study, predictors that were considered most clinically relevant were those that generally described workplace related processes. The findings confirmed the underlying supportive and collaborative processes that integrate predictors and account for their influence on outcome. Future rehabilitation efforts and indeed, individual outcomes, could benefit by incorporating these key predictors in targeted programs