Primary healthcare professionals' experience with patient participation in healthcare service development: A qualitative study

OBJECTIVE: How healthcare professionals experience patient participation in health service development impacts its use. This participatory study explores primary healthcare professionals' perceptions of developing health services with patient representatives. METHODS: Four focus group interviews with primary healthcare professionals (n = 26) were conducted. We analyzed data by applying Braun and Clarke's reflexive thematic analysis. RESULTS: The healthcare professionals perceived having a complementary interprofessional relationship with the patient representatives and regarded them as colleagues. However, the professionals navigated between a position of authority and collaboration, reconciling the need for participation with its challenges, e.g., to identify the representatives' collective representation among their personal experience, to ensure a more evidence-informed result that they and their colleagues would endorse. CONCLUSIONS: Regarding patient representatives as colleagues can blur the line between professionals and representatives' positions and functions and further complicate health service development. Our results indicate a need for skilled facilitators to lead the process. INNOVATION: This study identifies issues that professionals are uncertain about when collaborating with representatives to develop primary healthcare services; difficulties that professionals must overcome to collaborate constructively with representatives. Our findings can inform healthcare professionals' education about patient participation on all levels. We have suggested topics to address.