Consensus methods are increasingly being used in healthcare research, particularly for formulating policy and strategic directions. This paper by Elizabeth Halcomb, Patricia Davidson and Laura Hardaker discusses the issues central to the planning and conduct of the consensus development conference, and offers practical recommendations to researchers intending to use this approach.

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BackgroundIt remains unclear to what extent treatment-related gains in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms translate to improvements in broader domains of personal wellbeing, such as community connectedness, life achievement and security. We sought to determine whether: 1. personal wellbeing improves during the course of a treatment program and 2. changes in core symptom domains (PTSD, anxiety and depression) were associated with improvements in overall personal wellbeing.MethodsParticipants (N = 124) completed the PTSD Checklist, the Depression and Anxiety Stress Scales and the Personal Wellbeing Index at the start and end of a 4-week Trauma Focused CBT residential program, as well as 3- and 9-months post-treatment.ResultsPersonal wellbeing improved significantly across the 9-months of the study. Generalised estimating equations analyses indicated that (older) age and improvements in PTSD and depressive symptoms were independent predictors of personal wellbeing across time.ConclusionsAlthough personal wellbeing improved in tandem with PTSD symptoms, the magnitude of improvement was small. These findings highlight a need to better understand how improvements in personal wellbeing can be optimised following PTSD treatment.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s40359-018-0219-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

BackgroundOne of the key barriers to health in rural areas is health workforce. Poor understanding and communication about health workforce across all stakeholder groups (including the broad community) is very common and can negatively affect the health workforce, recruitment, experiences and outcomes.HypothesisIn this paper, we propose the concept of literacy about health workforce. We propose this as a specific, actionable extension of the existing and well accepted health literacy concept. We hypothesise that improving literacy about health workforce will improve, in particular, rural health workforce recruitment, retention and capability.Implications of the hypothesisWe propose that literacy about health workforce is important for all members of the health and broader system (e.g. local GP, mayor, workforce agency, health manager, Aboriginal health worker, carers, community health facilitators, patients, schools, local businesses, cultural and recreation groups) because we hypothesise their literacy about health workforce affects their capacity to make informed decisions and take action to manage their health workforce needs in direct synchrony with the community’s health needs. We hypothesise that improving literacy about health workforce will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of attracting, recruiting, training, and retaining a high quality, capable, health workforce, and further, will support the development and acceptance of innovative solutions to health workforce crises such as new models of care. This hypothesis is action orientated, is testable and includes the consideration of methods to engage and improve literacy of those within and external to the health workforce.

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