Partnering with parents in interprofessional leadership graduate education to promote family–professional partnerships

ABSTRACTEvidence supports the benefits to families of relationships with professionals that build on the concept of partnership, but there are few studies in the literature of strategies involving joint education for parents and professionals to enhance the capacity of parents of children with special healthcare needs to be effective interprofessional partners. Since 2007, parents of children with special healthcare needs have participated alongside graduate students from five different profession-based training programmes in a structured interprofessional leadership programme. The aims of this summative evaluation study were to elicit the influences of this training model on parents’ capacity to partner with both health professionals and other parents and explore features of the training that facilitated these partnership skills. Using qualitative analysis, a semi-structured interview, guided by sensitising concepts informing leadership development, was conducted with 17 of the 23 parents who participate...