Applying Coproduction Methods to Research, Clinical Care, Quality Improvement, and Education in PHM

Coproduction—actively collaborating with key partners and end-users toward a shared goal—challenges the traditional medical hierarchy. Each partner brings unique perspectives, knowledge, expertise, values, and preferences. In pediatric hospital medicine, coproduction involves collaborating with partners often excluded from research, clinical care, quality improvement, and medical education, including patients/families, nurses, and trainees. This article describes strategies for applying coproduction, using multiple pediatric coproduction initiatives as case examples, including efforts of the Patient and Family Centered I-PASS Study Group over the past decade to apply coproduction to studies to reduce harmful medical errors and implement family-centered rounds communication interventions. We describe how coproduction can be applied to (1) research (eg, codesigning instruments, measuring patient-reported outcomes), (2) clinical care (eg, improving treatment effectiveness, shared decision-making), (3) quality improvement (eg, measuring and improving adherence to intervention components), and (4) medical education (eg, training families, nurses, and trainees about communication, providing disease-specific education). Successful coproduction involves attention to diversity, equity, inclusion, engagement, compensation, and team management. Coproduction can lead to higher quality, safer, more equitable care, improved content development and delivery, refined methods and implementation, and more salient learning for all.