Involving healthcare professionals: that’s how you sow the seeds

Dr Gili Yaron went to great lengths to involve healthcare practitioners in her research. At first, to no avail. Eventually, however, she succeeded: a day centre agreed to take part. She shares three lessons she learnt.

Through her research, Yaron aims to discover how to improve relationships between people with dementia, their informal carers and healthcare professionals, to foster better collaboration. She prefers to conduct this research in collaboration with healthcare and welfare professionals. She learnt how to recruit these practice partners as she went along.

Speak the language of the field

Yaron went to great lengths to get care providers on board with her research. She sent emails, held conversations and drew on her network. But she found she wasn’t connecting with them. Theoretical terms that play a key role in the research, such as ‘relationship-centred care’, seemed unfamiliar to healthcare professionals.

The practical situation depends partly on policy, Yaron realised, so she tried to align herself with that. After some research, she settled on terms such as ‘shared self-reliance’ and ‘informal care support’. “Once I started using those terms, my message really began to resonate. Recruitment starts with connecting with the other person’s language.”

Dare to slow down to create opportunities

So the door opened a crack, but the answer was still ‘no’. Yaron: “At a certain point, it really wasn’t fun anymore. That’s when I stopped recruiting for a while.”

Yaron used that break to review, together with colleagues and friends, what was and wasn’t working in her approach. That’s how she realised that the pressure she felt to recruit was counterproductive. “I wanted too much, too quickly.” She decided to do things differently.

Yaron took the time and space to get to know the practicalities of the field and to expand her network. In practical terms: approaching contacts for a personal consultation, rather than to take part in her research. And offering on-site presentations, with the idea that giving something first opens doors. Yaron also devised a Plan B for what she would do if she couldn’t find any partners. So she began to work less out of the pressure of her original plan and more out of the confidence that the research deserves its own time.

Find the right approach: talk to decision-makers

When evaluating her approach, Yaron discovered that personal conversations and presentations had gone well. However, she wasn’t reaching the people who make the decisions about whether or not to participate in her project. So the question was: how do you engage directly with the decision-makers? And how do you approach that conversation?

The answer came from a strategic adviser whom Yaron knew from a previous project. This adviser is involved in coordinating regional meetings of managers. She offered Yaron ‘pitch time’ at a meeting with managers from various healthcare and welfare organisations. That set the process in motion: after the pitch, Yaron was approached by three managers. And following the necessary coordination, this led to the first collaboration with a day centre.

Yaron is now steadily continuing his search for other partners, using the right approach and channels, at the right pace. Yaron: “Recruitment takes a lot of time and thought, but persistence pays off!”