Purpose:The purpose of the co-development project was to create a tool that enhances children's active participation and agency in rehabilitation and in everyday life.
Materials and methods: Action research was the methodological approach. Participants in the different phases of the process (2015-2017) were children with disabilities, parents and rehabilitation professionals. The co-development process included: 1) designing the tool's first version, 2) piloting the tool, 3) evaluating the tool by collecting feedback and reflection, 4) generating the tool's final version. Results: Through the co-development process, an accommodating and digital tool called the CMAP Book -a description of the child's meaningful activities and participation -was developed. The CMAP Book is used with an electronic app enabling the identification and description of what is meaningful in daily life from the child's perspective with videos, photos, pictures, recording and writing. The tool enables the child, family and professionals to prepare and build collaboration in rehabilitation with flexibility according to child and family needs. Conclusions: Use of the CMAP Book promotes the active involvement of the child and parents in designing the rehabilitation process in daily life in partnership with professionals. The stakeholder involvement in the codevelopment facilitated meaningful results and a concrete tool for rehabilitation.
The globalisation of healthcare is changing the demands placed on health professionals. It requires different skills and thought processes across national borders. Thinking in an innovative manner may provide healthcare workers with some of the necessary tools to facilitate international change by increasing students' mental flexibility and ability to apply solutions in multiple contexts. We created the International Innovation Program for health profession education students to learn about and implement the innovation process. The programme provides students the opportunity to learn in interprofessional, international teams and apply didactic knowledge to community problems using the innovation process. The purpose of this article is to describe student perceptions across 4 years of programme implementation. Through analysis of closed-ended survey data, we found that students who participated in the programme reported improvements in collaboration and teamwork, project management, interprofessional teamwork, professional growth and development, thinking in an innovative manner, research and development skills, information seeking, and willingness to work on international projects. Analysis of the open-ended questions revealed five themes: language, teamwork and collaboration, cultural awareness, innovation process, and personal growth and self-improvement. The long-term, follow-up data indicate that these attributes can be transferred into a clinical context which have implications for improved collaboration and patient care.
Purpose: Collaboration between parents and professionals is essential to enable participation of children with disabilities. Participation is a widely researched topic in pediatric rehabilitation, and evidence for it providing opportunities for involvement and a sense of belonging in community and in larger society exists. There are, however, less research results on how collaboration builds participation pertaining to involvement in life situations. In collaboration with parents, therapists and teachers, the aim of the study was to describe factors that (a) promote and (b) prevent participation in life situations for school-aged children with disabilities, working towards participation in adulthood. Methods: The study applied a qualitative research design. The data was collected during the 2015–2016 academic year with five focus-group interviews by sampling procedure. The study involved five parents of children with disabilities, three therapists and two teachers. The research data was analyzed by inductive content analysis. Results: The results identified thirteen factors that promote child participation, with an emphasis on taking the child’s individuality into account. There were three barriers, which focused on attitudes or technical issues. Conclusions: The results suggest that collaboration on child-related factors has been well identified and implemented, but collaboration on enabling environmental factors needs to be developed. The results can be utilized to design what adults’ collaboration should focus on in promoting child participation.
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