Background: Effective consumer engagement is essential to providing relevant and appropriate health care. A tertiary oncology health service in metropolitan Melbourne took an innovative approach to consumer engagement by hosting a Patient Parliament. The aim of the Patient Parliament was to engage meaningfully with all consumers and hear their ideas on how we can improve our future service delivery.
Method: From November 2021- February 2022 consumers were engaged in the online Patient Parliament consultation process to collect mixed-methods data. The model used a co-design approach guided by a consumer panel to develop the event agenda and questions. After the Patient Parliament event smaller workshops were conducted online with consumers to explore the key priority areas in depth.
Results: Overall, 77 consumers attended the Patient Parliament, and 45 attended the smaller workshops. Consumers were from all 13 tumour streams, with the majority from Haematology (22%) and Breast (22%). The consumers were patients (87%), carers (7%), family members (3%) and volunteers (3%).
The results identified 4 consumer priority areas:
1) Information and communication – Improved access to medical information and greater staff sensitivity.
2) Navigation – Improved access to supports and peer navigation.
3) Building capacity –Partner in patients care to better advocate for themselves.
4) Support Networks – Peer support expanded, support for carers and families.
An evaluation of the event found 92% of consumers agreed the Patient Parliament was worthwhile, 95% were satisfied with opportunities to contribute, 92% felt they could share their thoughts on improvements and 92% felt they could share perspectives on what’s important to them.
Conclusion: The Patient Parliament proved to be an effective strategy to engage consumers to collect valuable feedback and guide strategy development for a tertiary health service. The methodology is useful