Co-Creating Health and Learning: Fostering Meaningful Patient Partnerships

Date and Time: June 16 at 11:00 am - 12:30 pm Central

Patients who are deeply involved in their care have safer clinical outcomes than passive patients. Even patients who cannot advocate for themselves, but whose loved ones are involved, achieve clinical benefits. This has been documented in many studies. “Nothing about me without me” is a guiding principle for patient engagement, but this can be a challenge for healthcare providers. This webinar will inspire participants to share ideas and methods for improving the healthcare ecosystem’s capacity for patient engagement in the co-design of research, abstract development, and conference presentations. It is designed to be a dialogue between health professionals, educators, and a patient.

The webinar will be led by a patient who will share how to engage patients, families, and care partners at all levels of healthcare including conference presentations. The facilitator will present her lived experience around personal healthcare events using storytelling. The discussion following the storytelling will help health professionals and educators to engage patients/families/care partners in the co-designing of better patient communication and engagement to improve care delivery, research, and education. The facilitator will make the case for “Patient Shared Decision-Making” – what it is, why it matters, and how to set about its implementation. During this session attendees will be able to share ways to engage patients/families/care partners, including examples like in the co-design of education, research, abstract development, and involvement of patients/families/care partners in conference presentations using shared decision-making principles.

Learning Objectives:
After attending this webinar, participants will be able to:

1. Share why the patient, family, and care partner voice matter in all areas of the healthcare ecosystem, especially when it involves education, research, abstract development, and conference presentations.
2. Encourage the participants to be more invested and involved in care, education, and research development because of the lived experience of patients, families, and care partners.
3. Provide co-design activities that will help practitioners, educators, and organizations develop a plan for patient engagement using the principles of shared decision-making and co-design.

Presenter:

• Rosie Bartel, Patient Partner

  Rosie is a widow, mother, grandmother, and an educator. In August of 2009 she underwent a total right knee replacement that developed into a MRSA staph infection. This healthcare acquired infection has led to 58 surgeries, over 200 hospitalizations, 100 blood transfusions, a right leg amputation six inches above the knee, then two years later a total hip amputation with the removal of part of her pelvic bone during another surgery. She also experienced sepsis and septic shock fourteen times.
  
  As Rosie continues to battle this infection in her body, she is driven to share her story of survival. Every day she uses the story of her journey to advise or advocate for others. Rosie believes in helping patients and caregivers find their voices. Today, she uses her story to co-design with medical professionals and researchers and to advise and advocate for patients and their caregivers.

Date and Time: July 9, 2025 at 11:00 am - 12:30 Central Time

Patient- and family-centered care is widely acknowledged as essential for achieving successful health outcomes and enhancing the care experience. However, it can be difficult for healthcare teams, as well as patients and their families, to build and maintain effective, person-centered collaborative care that truly meets this goal. Healthcare professionals, patients, and caregivers often bring diverse perspectives and expectations regarding how care should be delivered. Challenges such as limited time, language barriers, and health literacy can create communication gaps that disrupt team dynamics.

During this webinar, three patient advisors will share their personal experiences in overcoming these challenges and ideas about how to establish successful partnerships between patients and professionals. They will offer valuable insights and strategies to help prepare the next generation of health professionals to develop the skills needed to foster patient-centered care. The panelists will also discuss how co-creating learning with patients, family members, and the community as teachers can help shape how future healthcare professionals provide patient-and family-centered care. They will outline actionable steps for integrating patients as full partners in educational teams, with input on the design, delivery, and evaluation of patient-centered interprofessional education.

Learning Objectives:
After attending this webinar, participants will be able to:

1. Share why the patient, family, and care partner voice matter in all areas of the healthcare ecosystem, especially when it involves education, research, abstract development, and conference presentations.
2. Encourage the participants to be more invested and involved in care, education, and research development because of the lived experience of patients, families, and care partners.
3. Provide co-design activities that will help practitioners, educators, and organizations develop a plan for patient engagement using the principles of shared decision-making and co-design.

Presenters:

• Carl Boyd, Camden City Partnership
  Carl Boyd is the Community Liaison for the Camden City Partnership in Camden NJ at Center for Family Services. In this role, he connects with community partners and other programs that can help serve residents and the community in the city of Camden. He would describe his role as a connector. Through meetings and collaborating with community partners he connects people to resources that create a positive benefit in their lives. He is also a National Consumer Scholar, Community Advisory Committee member and an Ambassador for the Camden Coalition. Volunteering with the Camden Coalition at this level gives him a unique opportunity to use his lived experiences to help people in a meaningful way. On November 2, 2022, he shared his testimony about his battle with Covid Pneumonia and Long Covid during a public hearing with the NJ Department of Health’s Covid-19 Pandemic Task Force on Racial and Health Disparities at Rutgers University in Camden NJ.  This started his journey down the road of patient advocacy. His personal philosophy is every person has something to bring to the table in the way of helping people and their community. His vision is that we as individuals and the community realize what those talents are so we’re better able to serve each other and create value in our community.
   
• Evelis Burdett, Community Action Council, Camden Coalition
  Eve Burdett currently serves as Chair of the Camden Coalition's Community Advisory Committee (previously serving as Vice Chair). She also works with the Camden Coalition as an active Community Ambassador, a 2023/2024 National Consumer Scholar, and a member of Amplify: A consumer voices bureau. Born and raised in Camden, NJ, Eve's own lived experience of health challenges, homelessness, and addiction is now the catalyst for her work building empowering and authentic relationships with her community and being an advocate for others. In addition to her work with the Camden Coalition, Eve also volunteers with Wholesome Riches, distributing food to families throughout Camden, she serves as a Board member for the Camden Area Health Education Center, is an Expert Coach for the Rutgers/Rowan Board of Governors Certified Medical Assistant Pathways Program, is a Working Group member of the Camden Food Security Collective, and works for Reworld Waste. When Eve isn't busy serving her community, she is spending time with her four children and caring for her neighborhood cat colony.
   
• Jamal Brown, Community Action Council, Camden Coalition
  Jamal Brown is an inspirational community member, father, coach, and mentor who strives to set a good example for the next generation. He was inspired to do this work because he knows what it is like not to have the type of encouragement he now gives to others. Jamal is an former trustee member of Camden Coalition’s Community Advisory Committee and Housing First group, an alumni of the National Consumer Scholar program, and In 2019 he shared testimony at the New Jersey State House of Representatives to support passage of a bill to improve access to state IDs and driver’s licenses. In his free time, Jamal enjoys playing video games, reading the Bible, and spending time with positive people.

Date and Time: July 28, 2025 11:00 - 12:30 p.m.

From its inception, the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education (National Center) identified the needs and preferences of people served as the North Star of interprofessional practice. Optimum interprofessional health teams include the patient, family, caregiver, or advocate. However, many organizations, educators, and learners face challenges when working to engage patients and advocates as members of the education team. Since 2016, the National Center has convened the annual Nexus Summit as well as delivering diverse programs to support interprofessional teams worldwide. Through these experiences, we have engaged patients and advocates in various ways, some more successful than others, in collaboratively creating, delivering, and evaluating our programming.

In this presentation, the National Center team will share strategies, lessons learned, and practical wisdom gained from nine years of patient engagement in designing education. Maryjan Fiala, our Patient Advisor, has experienced a variety of models of patient engagement and will co-lead this session, sharing her perspective on what works - and what doesn’t. Models for patient engagement in co-creating education will include examples from the Nexus Summit 2016-2024 and other team development programming. These examples, from refining a Call for Abstracts to explicitly evaluate the degree of patient engagement in peer-reviewed sessions, to budgeting for patient reimbursement, aim to lower barriers that stand in the way of meaningful patient engagement.
 
Reference:
Brandt, B., Dieter, C., & Arenson, C. (2023). From the Nexus vision to the NexusIPE™ Learning Model. Journal of Interprofessional Care, DOI: 10.1080/13561820.2023.2202223https://nexusipe.org/nexus-summithttps://leadership.nexusipe.org/forums/senior-leaders/schedule
 
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this session, participants will:

1. Understand a variety of models to engage patients as co-creators and educators of health professionals and health teams.
2. Explore strategies to engage with patients, families, and communities locally to develop or enhance patient-engaged interprofessional education locally.

Presenters:

• Maryjan Fiala, Patient Advisor
  Maryjan Fiala is a dedicated advocate for families of young children who experience recurring or extensive hospitalization. Maryjan’s youngest son was born 17 weeks premature and spent nearly 19 months inpatient between two hospital systems. At the time of his second discharge, her son was ventilator and feeding-tube dependent and required continuous monitoring and care. Maryjan is committed to using her lived experience and professional background in adult learning to enhance patient-provider interactions and parent-provider communication. When sharing her perspective as a parent, Maryjan emphasizes patient-centered care, empathetic and compassionate communication, and cultivating mutual trust. Through the adult learning lens, Maryjan offers insights into the learning journey that begins when a parent is catapulted into the realm of critical health care and the scaffolding necessary for that parent to thrive as an informed advocate and caregiver for their child with chronic illness. In addition to sharing elements of her son’s journey with local medical students and resident physicians, Maryjan has co-presented at regional and national conferences for clinical and allied health providers. She looks forward to providing detailed feedback on presentations to support patient and family engagement.
   
• Angela Willson, National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education

  Angela Willson, MPH has served as the Interprofessional Continuing Education Manager for the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education since 2015. In this role, she serves as the main planner of the annual Nexus Summit conference, NexusIPETM Leadership Academy, National Center webinar series’, and other educational events designed to cultivate and foster interprofessional collaboration and leadership development.

  Angela also serves as a leader in the National Center Office of Interprofessional Continuing Professional Development, a Jointly Accredited Provider with Commendation. She works with organizations across the United States to design and accredit continuing education programs by and for the healthcare team.

  Angela’s professional background includes workforce development program design, creating new housing for veterans experiencing homelessness, non-profit fundraising, and participating in the ceramics and arts community in her hometown of Minneapolis, MN. She completed her Masters of Public Health - Administration and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
   

• Christine Arenson, National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education

  Christine A. Arenson, MD is Director of the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education. Arenson was named co-director of the National Center in July 2020, working in Nexus with Barbara Brandt, the National Center’s founding director. She transitioned to Director in December 2021.

  Prior to joining the National Center, Dr. Arenson served as Alumni Professor and Chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine, Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Dr. Arenson graduated from the University of Delaware in 1986 and Jefferson Medical College in 1990. She completed family medicine residency training at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, followed by a fellowship in geriatric medicine. She was the founding Director of the Jefferson Division of Geriatric Medicine and Palliative Care and has focused on patient-centered care and team education for health professionals as strategies to improve the health of older adults. She was the founding Co-Director of the Jefferson Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education, serving in that role from 2007-2016.

  Most recently, she has been actively engaged in primary care transformation to meet the Quadruple Aim: Improve the Experience of Care, Improve Health Outcomes, Reduce Costs and Restore Joy in Practice.  She previously served on the board of Jeff Care Alliance, Jefferson’s clinically integrated network, and the Executive Steering Committee for Jefferson Health population health and primary care service lines, implementing a new Advanced Primary Care Model across the Jefferson primary care network, now including over 100 practices. From 2013 – 2019 she was a member of the board of the Delaware Valley ACO. She also works to educate healthcare teams to improve healthcare outcomes. She is a past chair of the American Interprofessional Health Collaborative. She has served as a member of the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education Knowledge Generation Advisory Committee since 2014.

The National Center intends to offer interprofessional continuing education credit for the live webinars and the recordings through December 31, 2025. Learners can claim credit for each of the webinars viewed as either live activities or recordings.

In support of improving patient care, this activity is being planned and implemented by The National Center Office of Interprofessional Continuing Professional Development (National Center OICPD). The National Center OICPD is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) to provide continuing education for the healthcare team. As a Jointly Accredited Provider, the National Center OICPD is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organizations, not individual courses, are approved under this program. State and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for continuing education credit. The National Center OICPD maintains responsibility for this course. Social workers completing this course receive continuing education credits. The National Center OICPD (JA#: 4008105) is approved by the Board of Certification, Inc. to provide continuing education to Athletic Trainers (ATs). This activity was planned by and for the healthcare team, and learners who request it will receive Interprofessional Continuing Education (IPCE) credit for learning and change.