Shaping Health Services Through True Collaboration Between Professional Providers and Service Users

This chapter presents two different examples of true collaboration between health service providers and health service users. These two examples include: Illawarra Ostomy Information Group, and recovery courses in municipalities in western Norway. True collaboration between professional providers and service users mean striving for reciprocity and requires active, mutual engagement from the involved parties. Key concerns of contemporary patient/provider partnership models relate to: practice development (PD) and service improvement; clinician education; clinical policy; and research. The aims of PD work can be to enhance clinical services, such as to increase quality and safety in healthcare within a unit, to develop shared values and service priorities, and to improve communication within a healthcare team. Fundamental issues from PD, such as the use of creative approaches and principles of collaboration, inclusion and participation, can support the services in moving towards more collaborative practices.