Consumer engagement in teaching and learning across health disciplines: A systematic quantitative literature review

Abstract

Aim: To understand how health consumers contribute to teaching and learning in undergraduate health professional programs. Background: Undergraduate health students need to understand the patient and family experience so they can truly support them to manage and improve their health outcomes. This literature review explores how patients and families known as health consumers, contribute to teaching and learning in undergraduate health programs. Design: Systematic quantitative literature review Methods: Searches conducted across: CINHAL, MEDLINE, ProQuest Nursing, Scopus, and Google Scholar. Data from included studies was extracted and evaluated using Towle's taxonomy level of consumer involvement, presented as binary data using the Pickering and Byrne method and narrative synthesis of conducted. Results: A total of 109 studies were included. Narrative synthesis generated three themes being educational perspective, human perspective, and logical perspective. Engaging health consumers in education is crucial but does have challenges and should be prioritized when designing curricula. Consumers real-world experiences help students better prepare for clinical practice and understand the consumer perspective. Conclusion: This review provides insights into fostering consumer involvement in teaching, enhancing student learning, and improving consumer outcomes. Training and research are needed to develop strategies that enable undergraduate health students and health consumers to partner together. By learning the consumer perspectives, students gain insights to guide their practice and improve consumer health outcomes.