Wednesday 11 March 2026 | 14:30-15:15
Stream: People
Session format: Workshop

This session explores how patients and families can be powerful partners in driving safer, more compassionate healthcare. The first case, PatientPower, from Norway, highlights a co-designed solution that empowers people with multiple long-term conditions to manage their medications and improve information flow during vulnerable transitions from hospital to home. By recognising patients as underused resources, this project demonstrates how strengthening self-management can reduce errors and enhance safety. The second case, When Families Teach, from Canada, shares how families of children with medical complexity are co-designing medical training with educators, helping students and residents build empathy, communication, and confidence in working with families. Together, these initiatives show how integrating lived experience into both care and training can transform safety and quality, ensuring that patient and family voices are not only heard but embedded in the systems that shape their health journeys

Part 1 - Utilising the patient as a resource to improve medication information flow, medication management and patient safety

The patient is the continuum in their treatment, however medication communication between healthcare sectors primarily focuses on informing healthcare professionals (HCPs) at the next level of care. When patients are admitted to hospital, their control over their medication use is interrupted, and their role as key in transferring information between prescribers is not sufficiently recognised.
Our research focuses on patients with multiple long-term conditions (MLTCs), being responsible for administering their medications when at home. The aim of our project was to empower the patients to better self-manage their medications and improve the information flow after hospital discharge. By the use of design thinking methods we have developed a new solution which will give patients better control over their medication list throughout their patient journey between health care providers. In this session delegates will learn how utilizing the patient as a resource could improve information flow and medication management after hospital discharge.

Liv Mathiesen University of Oslo; Norway 
Berit Gallefoss Denstad Person with Lived Experience; Norway

Part 2 - When families teach: three quality improvement stories of co-designing medical training with families

This session highlights a decade-long partnership between a paediatrician and a patient and family engagement lead (a person with lived experience – PWLE) to co-design and improve medical education.

Three quality improvement initiatives will be shared where medical students and residents learned directly from families.

10 Years of Plan Do Act Study (PDSA) cycles: A session for second-year medical students evolved over a decade to enhance accessibility, content, and support for both students and family partners.

myBookletBC.com: Students supported parents in creating strength-based care plans, gaining first-hand insight into the real-world care challenges families face.

Building Connections: Paediatric residents participated in a co-designed workshop with eight parents, focusing on communication with families of children with medical complexity. A Preferred Language Guide that was developed will be shared.

These case studies demonstrate how co-design with PWLEs enhances learning, fosters empathy, and improves the quality of care.

Esther Lee University of British Columbia; Canada