There is an urgent need to understand and prevent suicide among doctors, internationally and in Australia. User-centred participatory approaches and co-design principles is an essential first step in this endeavour, offering meaningful engagement with doctors to co-design solutions that are grounded in understanding and hope.
This is a descriptive, informative and inspiring process-based piece. This poster will showcase an innovative dual-pathway process of embedding lived/living experience of suicidality (LLE) within a multi-study research program being conducted as part of a Suicide Prevention Australia (SPA) funded study. Visually and in text, the poster will: 1) describe the process of incorporating and engaging with LLE meaningfully across a 2-year research program; 2) highlight best-practice guiding principles behind this approach; and 3) explore the benefits and challenges of this approach.
The research program aimed to understand experiences and drivers of suicidality among Australian doctors and DITs, and to use this knowledge to co-design novel suicide prevention initiatives tailored for, and designed by, the medical workforce in Australia. The research comprised three separate studies, each of which utilised a unique methodology to engage, listen to and capture insights of participants with LLE of suicidality in quantitative, qualitative and multi-media data.
This poster is an engaging, visually rich and innovative case study of how LEE of suicidality can be embedded this research program via two participatory pathways. Firstly, by capturing the voices of participants with LLE of suicidality in qualitative and quantitative data and in the co-designed suicide prevention initiatives generated by the group co-design workshops. Secondly, the poster will outline the establishment and responsibilities of a formal LLE advisory group comprised of a diversity of doctors and DITs with LLE of suicidality, the key decisions they shaped and the benefits of this advisory process.
The poster will illuminate how best-practice participatory co-design principles can be meaningfully enacted and embedded across the research lifecycle of a multi-study research program. It provides researchers, individuals with LLE and policymakers with valuable insights and practical examples of how to implement co-planning and co-design principles in a supportive and structured way from project conception to dissemination. This poster is a learning opportunity of how to successfully embed and lean from LLE from a high-risk population group as participants and LLE Advisors. This poster will inspire incorporation of LLE in future suicide research, particularly in co-design of effective, tailored suicide prevention initiatives for populations in urgent need.