| Summary: | Patient partnership (also called patient and public involvement, citizen or community engagement, community-based participatory research, etc.) is the meaningful and active engagement of diverse individuals with personal experience of a health issue and informal caregivers, including family and friends, on research teams. Patient partnership has rapidly become the norm for psychological and health research in Canada. While patient partnership can significantly benefit patient partners, researchers and the research itself, it remains a relatively new practice and can be harmful when undertaken poorly. Notably, the Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists, fourth edition (the 'Code'), was developed largely before widespread patient partnership practice and neglects to name or define 'patient partners' as a group. While we purport that patient partnership is an ethical imperative for psychologists, the role of patient partners must be distinguished from others with whom psychologists and researchers interact (e.g. research participants, clients, employees, trainees, volunteers, clinical advisors). Our main purpose was to discuss key ethical standards from the Code pertinent to patient partnership including informed consent, privacy and confidentiality, fair treatment, general caring, competence and self-knowledge, risk, harms, benefits, objectivity, straightforwardness, openness, conflict of interest and extended responsibility. We also provide guidance regarding challenges to ethical practice in patient partnership, specifically risks posed by patient partners as an unnamed group in the Code; issues of power and vulnerability; challenges of multiple roles of patient partners; considerations of equity, diversity, inclusion and the need for an intersectional trauma-informed approach; and guidance for building an evidence base.
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