8th Biennial ACSPRI Social Science Methodology Conference

Care for others, and being cared for, is at the heart of healthcare. As health services continue to grapple with the problem of unsafe care, collaborative approaches to healthcare improvement (such as co-design and co-production) have been promoted to encourage the bottom-up engagement of multiple stakeholders – including practitioners, patients, family members, and researchers – in improving care. Although collaboration is emphasised, conflict, dissonance and other tensions can still arise from the range of perspectives, priorities and power dynamics involved. Care, therefore, is also central to collaborative research, in health.

In this panel discussion, we draw on different international studies to describe practices of care that support collaborative and reflexive practice improvement using video-reflexive ethnography (VRE). In particular, we showcase how transformative learning and improvement can be facilitated through the reflexive analysis of video footage of everyday healthcare practices. In VRE, both participants and researchers become vulnerable through having their behaviours, understandings, and assumptions questioned or challenged. This scrutiny and critical reflexivity require acts of care, in turn, to foster the psychological safety of all involved.

We will discuss, deliberate on, and debate how VRE researchers and participants care for each other during fieldwork and reflexive discussions in ways that mirrored how they usually care for colleagues, patients, and family members. Through dialogue, we will demonstrate how attention to care is a skill, not only central to healthcare, but also to the kinds of inclusive and collaborative practices that enable meaningful and sustained learning and improvement.

Recording link: https://acspri-org-au.zoom.us/rec/share/DQyFemhYuHAtiF8VAZtGHthBD7bhJIKNDV36yYAKbW1RoSCVLBHumyMwcDiYeOtK.YNzP6nTeuurd-mnV?startTime=1669176057000