Quality improvement in healthcare is a team effort 1 and most effective when it includes people using services and their carers, families, and advocates. These people bring direct expertise in matters of health from their personal experience of illness as well as skills from lives beyond the healthcare system. Some aspects of healthcare undeniably need to be improved, but the quality deficit needs to be clearly described from every angle. We can do things better or we can do better things, but both usually mean acting differently. Patients, carers, and their advocates are a vital source of different perspectives in healthcare. The invitation to patients to get involved needs to be both timely and respectful. In a board meeting discussing quality indicators, for example, it is demeaning to refer to the participating parent as “mummy.” Looking at someone through this lens blinds us to the other life experiences they may have had in their professional career. We need to respe...