Building FMNHS educator and researcher capacity to co-design health professions education (HPE) and curricula with healthcare consumers across 4 phases.

What is co-design?

Co-design is not just a process; it is a social movement centred on actively partnering with individuals who have lived experience, as well as communities, in research, education, and healthcare practice and improvement. It is a collaborative approach to designing and delivering health professional education that seeks to make the learning experience more authentic, effective, and relevant. At its core, co-design emphasises building strong relationships through participatory, action-based methods in health professional education.

Why is co-design a priority?

There is a global movement towards valuing and foregrounding lived experience and expertise in health professional education, research, and practice. Partnering with people who have lived experience and communities to co-design health professional education is therefore of growing interest among consumers, educators, clinicians, and researchers. Incorporating lived experience into health professional education is designed to ensure that education aligns with actual individual and community health and care needs. Co-designed health professional education identifies, validates, and utilises lived experience and expertise, the benefits of which often extend beyond the intended purposes of bringing people together in pursuit of health professional education excellence.

What was the purpose of this fellowship?

The purpose of this education fellowship was to strengthen existing and seek new interdisciplinary collaborations to enhance health-related curricula quality across the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences (FMNHS) through building educators’ capacity to co-design health professional education (HPE) and curricula with healthcare consumers.

To achieve this aim, the FMNHS education fellowship objectives include:

  1. Draw on existing interprofessional research on co-designing HPE with healthcare consumers to develop a curricula framework to guide co-designed HPE.
  2. Trial and refine the framework with healthcare consumers and fellowship collaborators across four learning contexts and discipline pilot projects.
  3. Co-design an FMNHS online education program utilising best practice exemplars to develop educators’ capacity to co-design HPE.
  4. Disseminate and evaluate the curricula framework.

What were the fellowship outcomes?

The fellowship has successfully advanced co-design of health professionals across the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. Using a co-design approach, four pilot projects were accomplished across distinct health professional disciplines and contexts:

  1. Carpool Conversations: An Innovative Approach to Understanding Patient Experiences with Paramedics, led by Associate Professor Brendan Shannon, Department of Paramedicine
  2. Development of a new co-designed post-graduate mental health nursing curricula led by Renee Molloy and Dr Alison Hansen
  3. Enhancing Bias Awareness Through Co-Designed Simulation-Based Education led by Professor Gabrielle Brand and James Bonnamy
  4. Co-designing body donor program consent processes led by Dr Georgina Stephens

Together, these four pilot projects built educator capacity to co-design health professional education, strengthened professional collaborations, and enabled the development of a targeted and relevant framework to support all educators in the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences to co-design health professional education.

The following conference presentations were delivered:

  1. International EMS Conference (Sweden): “Carpool Conversations: Integrating consumer narratives into paramedicine education”
  2. Molloy, R., Hansen, A., Robinson, E., D'Astoli, P., Wood, T., & Buus, N. (2023). Exploring Stakeholder Experiences of Codesigning a Post-registration Mental Health Nursing Curriculum. Abstract from Trinity Health and Education International Research Conference 2023, Dublin, Ireland. https://theconf2023.exordo.com/programme/presentation/50
  3. Sevenhuysen, S., Brand, G., Morphet, J., Dix, S., Davis, J., Molloy, R., Sinni, S., Watts, A., Daniel, M., Challis, H., Bonnamy, J. & D'Astoli, P. ‘Clinical Blindness: Co-designing interprofessional simulation- based education with consumers to uncover and address cognitive bias in healthcare’. ANZAHPE Conference 2023.
  4. Dix, S., Davis, J., Sevenhuysen, S. L., Morphet, J., Molloy, R., Watts, A., Daniel, M., Challis, H., Bonnamy, J., D'Astoli, P. & Brand, G. ‘Clinician's Blind Spot: Co-designing simulation infused with lived experience to address cognitive bias in healthcare’. Simulation Congress Conference 2023.
  5. Davis, J., Brand, G., Bonnamy, J., Dix, S., D'Astoli, P. & Sevenhuysen, S. L. “It’s so authentic – you can’t make this stuff up!”: Co-designing simulation with consumers to address cognitive bias in healthcare. ANZAHPE Conference 2024
  6. Congress of the Asia Pacific International Congress of Anatomists (APICA) and Annual Meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Clinical Anatomists (ANZACA) 2023, Dunedin, New Zealand. Stephens, G. C. (2024). Co-designing body donor program consent processes. Anatomical Sciences Education, 17(5), 1108-1109. Article F_01. https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.2476
  7. International Federation of Associations of Anatomists (IFAA) 2024 Congress, Gwangju, Korea. Stephens, G. C. (2024). Co-Designing Body Donation Consent Processes. Anatomy & Cell Biology, 57(S3), S18. Article IA-0037. https://acbjournal.org/content/articles/supple_issue.html
  8. International Symposium on Morphological Sciences (ISMS) 2025, Lisbon, Portugal. Stephens, G.C. (2025). Creating community-supported informed consent for body donation: a co-designed study. Lisbon, Portugal. https://www.isms2025.org/program/detailed-program
  9. Stephens, G.C. (2025). Bioethics Unicorns Session 15: Co-designing Informed Consent for Donor Programs. American Association for Anatomy. https://www.anatomy.org/ANATOMY/ANATOMY/Resources/Webinars-Folder/Webinar-Recording-Pages/BioethicsUnicorns15.aspx

The following journals articles were published:

  1. Molloy, R., Hansen, A., Robinson, E., D'Astoli, P., Wood, T., & Buus, N. (2024). Stakeholder perspectives on co-designing a post-registration mental health nursing curriculum: A case study. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 31(3), 303-312. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpm.12988
  2. Hansen, A., Molloy, R., Wood, T., D'Astoli, P., Robinson, E., & Buus, N. (2023). We have to work together: Can service users and mental health nurses co-design a post-registration curriculum? International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 32(S1), 20-21. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/inm.13210
  3. Brand, G., Bonnamy, J., Dix, S., Morphet, J., Molloy, R., Davis, J., … Sevenhuysen, S. (2024). ‘You don’t see what I see’: Co-designing simulation to uncover and address cognitive bias in healthcare. Medical Teacher, 46(7), 885–888. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142159X.2024.2313581
  4. Stephens G. C. (2025). "Because everybody's different": Co-designing body donor program consent processes. Anatomical sciences education, 10.1002/ase.70060. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.70060
  5. Brand, G., Sheers, C., Hansen, A., Stephens, G., Dart, J., Shannon, B., & Bonnamy, J. (2025). How to… Co‐design Education With Healthcare Consumers. The clinical teacher, 22(2), e70039. https://doi.org/10.1111/tct.70039.

How does the work from this fellowship inform future practice?

The outcomes of the four pilot projects and the framework will support health professional educators across the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences to successfully co-design their health professional educator. The framework offers practical advice on co-designing health professional educators, including how to best acknowledge and remunerate people with lived experience and expertise.