Jennifer Pelt Wisdom

Introduction: Active involvement of patients is an essential feature of learning health systems and patient‐centered research. Research networks and healthcare organizations lack guidance on best practices for developing and sustaining patient engagement infrastructure. We sought to examine perspectives on promising Veteran‐engagement infrastructure and practices used by US Veterans Affairs (VA) research networks. Methods: We solicited expert opinion from three separate panels of Veterans, VA engagement staff, and VA research leaders using a modified Delphi process comprising two rounds of online surveys and a set of virtual group meetings or individual interviews. In a prior study, we identified promising engagement practices in use by VA national research networks. We analyzed survey data with predefined rating categories to determine which practices the three expert panels consistently endorsed. We used thematic analysis to compare experts' perspectives across panels and to identify emergent cross‐cutting themes. Results: Veterans, VA engagement staff, and VA research leaders consistently endorsed 66% (29/44) of the research networks' promising Veteran‐engagement practices. Summarized, these practices formed five recommended engagement‐related responsibilities for VA research networks. Some network engagement practices were inconsistently endorsed (13/44, 30%), and two practices (4%) received overall ratings of neutral or unsure by at least one expert panel. Network practices not consistently endorsed varied by expert panel, but panelists' comments reflected three overarching themes: constraint of resource availability, commitment to respectful and meaningful engagement processes, and concern for potential burden on partners. Conclusions: Panelists' perspectives highlight challenges regarding how to best invest limited patient‐engagement resources within research and learning health system organizations. Research network engagement infrastructure can help expand the capacity and culture of patient‐centered research and care. Organizations seeking to function as learning health systems need to devote planning time, skilled staff, and funds to develop and sustain patient‐engagement infrastructure tailored to their context.

Health care organization leaders are charged with patient safety, evidence-based practice, financial sustainability, capacity, and staff supervision in systems that are challenged by bureaucracy, fragmentation, mistrust, and limited interdisciplinary engagement. It is not known how leaders effectively address specific challenges of staff supervision, policies/mandates, difficult conversations, and staff burnout. This study collected strategies from high-performing leaders in the Veterans Health Administration to understand how they approach these challenges. Applying a positive deviance approach to examine organizational survey data across the entire administration, we first statistically identified Veterans Health Administration sites that, based on employee feedback, showed the greatest organizational health improvements from 2022. These sites' chiefs of staff (N = 24) were then interviewed about how they approached four specific challenges. Findings indicate commonalities across these leaders' best practices, including creating opportunities for dialogue, building a culture of learning and psychological safety, proactively addressing process improvements, supporting work-life balance, leading with grace and courage, and maximizing and protecting resources. Public sector health care leaders may benefit from this approach to learning from these highest performers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Introduction: Mentoring is often conceptualized regarding benefits to mentees; however, we must also understand benefits and challenges from the perspectives of mentors. This scoping review describes, and classifies, benefits and challenges of mentoring as described by mentors. Methods: The authors searched MEDLINE for articles related to mentors' perspectives of challenges and benefits. They applied scoping review procedures for screening abstracts, scrutinizing full texts, and extracting data. Researchers selected qualitative and quantitative empirical articles published prior to July 2023 that included mentors in a medical setting (physicians, residents, dentists, pharmacists, and nurses) providing their perspectives on the challenges or benefits of mentoring. Results: The search identified 3038 abstracts, which the authors narrowed to 461 for in‐depth review. Of these, 93 unique articles fit the inclusion criteria ( N = 53 describing challenges and N = 66 articles describing benefits). From these articles, the authors extracted mentor‐reported challenges of mentoring, primarily time management/workload, mentor–mentee relationship, lack of ability, information, and resources, bureaucratic issues, and mentee lack of interest/motivation. Conclusions: Mentor‐reported benefits of mentoring include increased skills, satisfaction, generativity/legacy, increased knowledge, professional relationships, and increased confidence. Mentor‐reported challenges include time management/workload, mentor–mentee relationship, lack of ability/information/resources, bureaucratic issues, and mentee lack of interest/motivation. These findings highlight the mentor‐mentee relationship as a source of both challenges and benefits for mentors. These findings suggest medical centres should engage in mentor training, structured mentorship programs, and structured mentor support to maximize benefits and minimize challenges for mentors.

Trauma-informed design is an emerging concept that combines elements of interior design, environmental psychology, and clinical psychology. Previous reports describe the potential impact of the physical space and design of homeless shelters on positive psychological outcomes (Pable, 2012). However, there is little known research on these outcomes. This article provides preliminary support for positive outcomes through a program evaluation of a trauma-informed design of resident bedrooms at two homeless shelters in North Carolina. Residents (n = 61) were asked to take a presurvey (before room design) and postsurvey (after design) that assessed their experiences of preparedness, hopefulness, and safety. Among those who completed both pre and postsurveys (n = 43), there was a statistically significant improvement in all three factors following the design, with the largest effect sizes for safety and total score average. Additionally, qualitative findings indicate participants felt the design updates increased their experiences of dignity (n = 17) and safety (n = 13), with some indicating increased feelings of hope (n = 4). We discuss implications for other homeless shelters, as well as similar institutions that support people in transitional housing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Mixed methods research is increasingly valued, although little attention has been placed on how to execute such projects well to achieve optimal publication for impact. Multiple publications from a single study allow scholars to explicate findings that cannot be contained in a single article and which address different aspects of study findings. This article contributes to the fields of mixed methods research by building on their roots in pragmatism, which we argue calls for effective research studies resulting in published findings. This article proposes a project management framework and describes how to optimize mixed methods manuscript production during each of 5 research phases. We describe lessons learned from project management and implementation of our own mixed methods projects to help research teams build quality projects with optimal publication outputs and impact.