Using Qualitative Program Evaluation Techniques for Promoting Student Voices on National Healthcare Policy

As the literature on Interprofessional healthcare delivery expands, there is an opportunity to add a fresh, open set of perspectives to the policy debates regarding healthcare - the voice of healthcare students as captured through strategic use of participant evaluation focus groups. The voices of healthcare student tend to be missing from health policy discussion, yet these are the very professionals whose interprofessional training and educational experiences will be impacting healthcare for decades. Moreover, theses student voice can be especially insightful, capturing the policy perspectives and thoughts of the next generation of healthcare professionals as they are completing their education prior to entering their professions. As reported in this paper, the student insights were thoughtful, creative, and of merit for healthcare policy debates. We accomplished this by expanding the scope of evaluation participant focus group questions beyond typical evaluation content of participant experiences, satisfaction, and related gains in knowledge, skills, and dispositions solely from the narrow perspective of the pilot program. Instead, we provided students with the opportunity to offer fresh, new insights and perspectives on their program experience in terms of the national policy debates underlying the rationale for the pilot project, namely the Triple Aims of healthcare (i.e., patient health - quality, patient satisfaction, and per patient cost). This also paper offers recommendations for 1) qualitative researchers to engage national policy debates from studies of a single program, and 2) program evaluators to promote participant voices beyond program perspectives through focus group questions of larger policy interest