From leadership research to district action: Service user involvement in the education of allied healthcare professionals in Ireland: a mixed-methods exploration

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

Read source Search paper agent CC BY 4.0

Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Abstract Background Service user involvement (SUI) in healthcare education is reported to foster more patient-centred practitioners. However, there is limited guidance as to how authentic SUI can be embedded within educational practice. This study aimed to describe current practices and explore how SUI may be better embedded in the delivery of healthcare education. Methods A convergent mixed-methods study was undertaken in a higher-level healthcare education department in Ireland. Data were collected via an online survey completed by educators (n = 27) and semi-structured interviews with service users (n = 6). Survey data were analysed using descriptive statistics and content analysis. Thematic analysis of interview transcriptions was undertaken. Results Most educators indicated that SUI was limited to ‘one-off’ interactions or case-based learning and that there was ‘probably’ (75%) or ‘definitely’ (9%) not enough SUI. Both staff and service users reinforced the value of SUI in healthcare education, yet the potential of the role of the service users was not fully realised. Service users described the benefits of their involvement in humanising patients beyond the context of their condition/illness. Several challenges were highlighted, including limited resources, lack of empowerment and insufficient knowledge of the scope of SUI. Conclusions The need to educate all stakeholders about the potential for SUI beyond one-off contributions was highlighted. Additionally, engaged leadership is needed to facilitate the contextual integration of processes and procedures to embed the role of service users in higher education. Further investment is needed to advance SUI, which may require additional encouragement from funders, policy makers and regulators. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-026-08575-3. Keywords: Public engagement, Healthcare education, Service user

Study methods

Ethical approval was granted from the Faculty of Education and Health Sciences Research Ethics Committee at the University of Limerick, Ireland (2023_05_12_EHS).

Limitations

This work offers a nuanced overview of SUI at one public university in the Republic of Ireland from both educator and service user perspectives. A strength of this study is its interprofessional perspective on SUI. Likewise, interprofessional learning opportunities should be considered when further embedding service users, maximising the potential for SUI to enhance collaborative practice, whilst simultaneously lessening demands on service users to deliver sessions to individual groups. This research also has several limitations. Firstly, although open-ended questions and free text boxes allowed for the sharing of opinions by educators, in-depth nuances and unanticipated insights could be further identified using interview or focus group methods. Secondly, we aimed to include service users with a range of experiences of healthcare access, but it was not possible to capture the insights of all types of service users. Future research could benefit from a dedicated service user contact database. Thirdly, although students contributed to the design and analysis of this study, further research is needed to explicitly examine their perspectives on SUI, a focus now underway. Finally, we acknowledge a missed opportunity to involve service users as co-researchers.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Sarah Dillon; Pauline Boland; Anne Griffin; Erin Adam; Elizabeth Helen Cooper; Paula Dowling; Nimra Parveen Ahmed; Aoife Lily Gallagher. Service user involvement in the education of allied healthcare professionals in Ireland: a mixed-methods exploration. BMC Medical Education (2026-01-14). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-026-08575-3

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.