Patient family advisors' perspectives on engagement in health-care quality improvement initiatives: Power and partnership.

Motivations for serving as a PFA included a sense of obligation to contribute to the improvement of a public system, recognition of their rights as citizens within a publicly funded system and an opportunity to openly express their concerns where previous encounters had been very negative. The invited spaces of the RPIWs were created by policymakers to accord visible power to PFAs. Participation resulted in PFAs gaining new insights into the structure and operations of the system, affirmation of their right to advocate and recognition of the potential to claim spaces of power as consumers. Advisement on specific health-care initiatives using the vehicle of PFAs shaped and promoted new forms and spaces of power, representing one step in a very long road to full engagement of consumers in health care.