Beyond the role of participant: a firsthand account of the experiences of a patient-oriented research team.

Background: Immigrants often find accessing and navigating the healthcare system difficult upon arriving in Canada. Existing challenges of accessing healthcare due to differing cultural norms, language barriers, limited health literacy, and system complexity have been outlined extensively in literature; however, evidence-informed practices to mitigate these disparities have yet to be determined. Our research team took a patient-oriented research (POR) approach to learn more about the lived experiences of immigrants as they attempt to access and navigate the health system upon immigrating to Canada.