Grant: Patient-Oriented Research Collaboration Grants

Patients have insight into the diseases they deal with, insight which health care professionals and researchers do not have. This expertise is particularly important in the context of chronic diseases such as organ failure and organ transplantation, where illness is part of patients' lives. In recent years, the importance of involving patients in health care services has been increasingly recognized because it increases patients' sense of empowerment and adherence to treatment and also allows health care providers to offer services that are relevant to their patients. Engaging patients as research partners increases the relevance and quality of research, facilitates recruitment, enhances public trust and allows for more effective dissemination of results. The Canadian National Transplant Research Program (CNTRP) is an interdisciplinary research team looking at a variety of issues related to organ and tissue donation and transplantation. The principal objectives of the CNTRP are to increase organ and tissue donation and improve the lives of Canadian transplant patients. To pursue research projects that are relevant for the Canadian transplant community (patients, caregivers, donors, researchers), and as a result of previous patient engagement activities, the CNTRP launched the Patient Researcher Partnership Platform (Core 4), which is responsible for the development of partnerships between patients and researchers. Additionally, in the last year, the CNTRP has integrated three patients as project co-leads and three others as researchers in three studies. Although, there are many rationales for partnering with patients in research, data supporting this practice is lacking. The aim of this project is to document the impact of these researcher-patient partnerships at both the network and researcher-patient dyad levels in an effort to record how these partnerships influence the research process. This project will provide information that will help the CNTRP