Innovation
Service user and carer involvement in student selection
What prompted innovation?
The importance of involving service users and carers in all aspects of health and social care education and service delivery is now paramount. There have been calls to make the voice of the service user/carer more influential in nurse education for some while, but this has become formalised in the most recent standards for nurse education (Nursing and Midwifery Council [NMC] 2010).
The School of Health and Social Care (HSC) at Bournemouth University has a long history of developing service user and carer involvement in its programmes; starting initially in Post and Pre-qualifying Social work. The following link illustrates how HSC is developing this work:
http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/hsc/swcarerpg.html
Two service user and carer coordinators facilitate the Bournemouth University Carer and Service user Partnership Group. The members of this group include 27 generic service users and carers who provide a range of expertise to the Nursing, Midwifery, Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy programmes.
In order to provide as broad a representation as possible, Peter and Angela have established links with a wide range of groups/organisations, including:
- Dorset Race Equality Council
- Yeovil and Dorset PPI networks
- Patient engagement at Bournemouth and Christchurch NHS trust
- Dorset Maternity Services Liaison Committee
- The MS Society, Bournemouth
- Langside School Parents’ group
- The Teenage Council – Poole Hospital
- Rossmore Children’s Centre
- The Dorset Mental Health Forum
What makes innovation different?
It is of great importance to service users and carers that the right people be selected for the health and social care programmes at Bournemouth University. During the interview process, if they are directly involved as part of the panel, service users and carers provide a unique perspective and may choose to focus on the ‘human qualities’ in the candidates.
It is not always practically possible to have service users and carers as panel members, due to the vast numbers of candidates, particularly in adult nursing. However, the following examples illustrate the different ways service users and carers have input into the admissions process at HSC.
- Mental Health Nursing – There has been a service user representative at every interview day for a number of years. They provide an overview of each candidate’s performance on the group task.
- Adult nursing – service user and carer coordinators have sat on interview panels for adult nursing interviews as carer and service user representatives, with a view to involving members of the partnership group in the future. Capacity issues may have a bearing on whether this will happen. Currently, candidates view a video of a service user and carer as part of the interview process, which highlights issues, such as the need for good communication and the role of the carer. This forms the basis for an observed group discussion. BU Media School Students (facilitated by service user and carer coordinators) will soon be filming members of the Partnership Group, who have had recent experience of nursing care, to from part of the introductory talk to the candidates. This will illustrate that service user and carer involvement is embedded into the undergraduate programme.
- Midwifery – Women’s views were gathered from a local children’s centre, lay members of the MSLC and ‘Netmums’ to elicit what they saw as the qualities/skills of a good midwife. The responses informed a ‘service user generated’ question for the interview process.
- Occupational Therapy – Similar to midwifery, a service user generated’ question is now included in the interview process as a result of information gathered from a focus group comprising of people with recent experience of OT.
Changes in practice
This is difficult to evidence concretely, and the innovation is still in development. However, the explicit focus on perspective of service users and carers enables interview panels to scrutinise more explicitly the human empathy qualities of potential students.
Impact
There is currently no formal evidence in relation to service user and carer involvement in student recruitment specifically. The involvement of service users and carers in taught elements of health programmes is reviewed more closely through feedback from both academics and staff. This has so far been highly positive, but is also being used as the basis for developing this area in the future.
Dissemination
The work of the HSC service user and carer coordinators is disseminated through their website and through regular meetings with academic staff within HSC. There work has also been showcased at wider university conferences and events.