Using Co-Design to Develop a Collective Leadership Intervention for Healthcare Teams to Improve Safety Culture

Abstract

While co-design methods are becoming more popular in healthcare; there is a gap within the peer-reviewed literature on <i>how</i> to do co-design in practice. This paper addresses this gap by delineating the approach taken in the co-design of a collective leadership intervention to improve healthcare team performance and patient safety culture. Over the course of six workshops healthcare staff, patient representatives and advocates, and health systems researchers collaboratively co-designed the intervention. The inputs to the process, exercises and activities that took place during the workshops and the outputs of the workshops are described. The co-design method, while challenging at times, had many benefits including grounding the intervention in the real-world experiences of healthcare teams. Implications of the method for health systems research are discussed.