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ObjectivesTo understand identity tensions experienced by health professionals when patient partners join a quality improvement committee.DesignQualitative ethnographic study based on participatory observation.SettingAn interdisciplinary quality improvement committee of a Canadian urban academic family medicine clinic with little previous experience in patient partnership.ParticipantsTwo patient partners, seven health professionals (two family physicians, two residents, one pharmacist, one nurse clinician and one nurse practitioner) and three members of the administrative team.Data collectionData collection included compiled participatory observations, logbook notes and semi-structured interviews, collected between the summer of 2017 to the summer of 2019.Data analysisGhadiri’s identity threats theoretical framework was used to analyse qualitative material and to develop conceptualising categories, using QDA Miner software (V.5.0).ResultsAll professionals with a clinical care role and patient partners (n=9) accepted to participate in the ethnographic study and semi-structured interviews (RR=100%). Transforming the ‘caregiver–patient’ relationship into a ‘colleague–colleague’ relationship generated identity upheavals among professionals. Identity tensions included competing ideals of the ‘good professional’, challenges to the impermeability of the patient and professional categories, the interweaving of symbols associated with one or the other of these identities, and the inner balance between the roles of caregiver and colleague.ConclusionThis research provides a new perspective on understanding how working in partnership with patients transform health professionals’ identity. When they are called to work with patients outside of a simple therapeutic relationship, health professionals may feel tensions between their identity as caregivers and their identity as colleague. This allows us to better understand some underlying tensions elicited by the arrival of different patient engagement initiatives (eg, professionals’ resistance to working with patients, patients’ status and remuneration, professionals’ concerns toward patient ‘representativeness’). Partnership with patients imply the construction of a new relational framework, flexible and dynamic, that takes into account this coexistence of identities.

The era we live in, with its rapid societal changes, the acceleration of digitalization, the reasoning power of artificial intelligence, and the unprecedented environmental crisis, makes it urgent for us to explicitly and collectively define the human faculties we wish to cultivate to care for individuals, communities, and the environment. In this participatory workshop facilitated by a patient partner, a physician, and a psychologist, we will freely inquire into what enables the cultivation of the art of care, drawing from various examples from the clinical practice of family physicians, residents, medical students, and patient partners. Narratives and images of the art of care will serve as a basis for discussions. We will explore current representations and norms surrounding the art of care within the medical culture, paying attention to their biases and limitations. We will integrate biomedical perspectives, patient experiential knowledge, and insights from the humanities. The aim is to reexamine the epistemology of care and identify opportunities for innovation. We will propose that one remedy for the overwhelming intensity of the modern world is to become aware of what we can do together-care, think, repair, and build connections-and to have the courage to increase their visibility today by embracing a plurality of perspectives and co-constructing with patients.