No abstract

Can formally employing service‐users in co‐production roles redress the problematic power imbalances inhibiting co‐production in the public sector? In this paper, we analyze service‐users formally employed in co‐production roles. Through semi‐structured interviews, we illustrate how actors use their voice, experience, and identity to respond to different power imbalances. First, through the process of “inverting professionalism” structural limitations resulted in neutralized co‐production. Second, through the process of “embedding expertise” formally employed service‐users challenged collective expectations of their role and meditated power imbalances, resulting in enhanced co‐production. Finally, through the process of “perpetuating rejection” a new exacerbated power imbalance emerged when their employment became a negative resource, resulting in tokenistic co‐production. We extend understandings of how formally employing service‐users has potential to redress power imbalances. However, we caution against policy taking this for granted and argue that more consideration of the influence of different forms of power is needed.

When the COVID-19 pandemic caused face-to-face meetings to be cancelled, an industry-sponsored educational programme, designed to develop skills and expand knowledge of young experts in oncology and urology, was forced to partially move from face-to-face setting to virtual meetings. In our outcomes analysis, we aimed to better understand what drives behavioural change following a series of educational interventions based on the physical or virtual formats. Therefore, we performed a structured outcomes evaluation for each educational intervention, including the perspectives of the learner and the teaching faculty. Our main findings were that “relevance” is the strongest driver of recall, satisfaction and behavioural change. Social interactions amongst learners and between faculty and learners are possible in the digital world, and we observed a trend of the young learners in favour of digital learning, especially with improved technical platforms enabling social interaction. Other findings were that new skills are required by the teaching faculty and that hybrid formats were identified by all participants as the model of the future. When developing future educational programmes, these specific needs of learners and faculty need to be considered and offer opportunities to develop more personalised programmes in order to increase learning impact.