Supporting the evaluation of patient engagement in health system organizations

Abstract

Patient engagement is increasingly recognized as an important aspect of patient-centred care. As patient engagement has evolved, a greater emphasis has been placed on evaluating these efforts. Evaluation is essential to understand what elements of engagement are effective, what isn’t working and areas for improvement. Despite the various evaluation tools available, there remains limited practical guidance to support health system organizations in carrying out evaluation efforts. This thesis aims to understand how health system organizations can be effectively supported in evaluating their patient engagement initiatives by 1) summarizing how health system organizations approach evaluation efforts, 2) identifying common challenges associated with evaluation and supports that help to foster evaluation efforts and 3) how to improve an evaluation tool to increase its usability to better support evaluation practices. These studies offer practical guidance to support health system organizations in their patient engagement evaluation efforts, including developing robust and comprehensive evaluation plans.