Wednesday 23rd November 2022, 15:00–16:30 (Australia/Melbourne), Zoom Breakout Room 1
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.
Associate Professor Ann Dadich is affiliated with the Western Sydney University School of Business. She is also a registered psychologist and a full member of the Australian Psychological Society. A/Prof. Dadich has accumulated considerable expertise in health service management, notably knowledge translation. This encompasses scholarship on the processes through which different knowledges coalesce to promote quality care. This is demonstrated by her publishing record, with approximately 200 refereed publications; the research grants she has secured; and the awards she has received. A/Prof. Dadich holds editorial appointments with several academic journals, including the Australian Health Review and the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. She is also the Deputy Director of the Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research and Enterprise Knowledge Translation Strategic Platform; she serves on the Australian Consortium for Social and Political Research Incorporated (ACSPRI) Executive Committee; she is a member of the Board of the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management (ANZAM); she chairs the ANZAM Research Committee; she chairs the ANZAM Health Management and Organisation Conference Stream; and she convenes the ANZAM Health Management and Organisation Special Interest Group. She supervises doctoral candidates and teaches undergraduate units on change management, innovation, creativity, and organisational behaviour.
