Innovation
A strategic, integrated approach to exposing the students to the lived experience of service users and carers within differing aspects to their student experience, utilising Tew’s (2004) ladder of involvement as a measurement of progress. The project was started in April 2012 and is on-going. The strategy includes:
- A strategic service user and carer reference group has been formed, the ‘experts by experience’ group which meets regularly and is made up of user/carer organisations and individuals who have many years of lived experience of varying conditions.
- A confidential database is evolving to enable a bank of people that are willing to become involved in different ways, from face to face sessions to programme development.
- It is also recognised that service users/carers need knowledge and empowerment to become successfully involved in academia. We have therefore held a successful workshop in which service user/carers attended to be informed about how the Faculty works and how they might contribute. Presentations were made by our student recruitment team about how they could contribute to student selection for our nursing courses and a service user spoke about her experiences of face to face teaching and what it entailed.
- It can be argued that academic staff within HEI hold the key to the degree of user/carer involvement within healthcare education due to the power they maintain to dictate the levels of involvement within their institution. It is very important that academic staff feel empowered to understand the benefits of exposing students to the lived experience and have the practical expertise to make it happen. A series of staff guidance protocols are therefore being developed to assist staff in being able to promote involvement in differing ways, including face to face teaching, working committees, and making podcasts and videos. More staff support activities are being planned.
What prompted innovation?
My interest in the importance of exposing healthcare students to the lived experience that went well beyond the ‘tell my story’ face to face session for students has prompted this innovation. It is apparent, reflected in the literature, that institutions that only support face to face involvement activities are only promoting a tokenistic approach. Extending involvement to many other areas by empowering both service user/carers and staff by using several strategic innovations should ensure that this Faculty can grow far from just tokenistic involvement activities.
What makes innovation different?
The acknowledgement that academic staff hold the key to the successful involvement of service users and carers within this Faculty and that by the diligent support and empowerment of this particular stakeholder group will go a long way to ensuring the success of the whole project.
Changes in practice
This is a difficult factor to measure within the year this innovation has been running. The recent Francis report has highlighted many issues with healthcare, not least of which is the taking account of the wishes of patients and their carers and putting them at the heart of healthcare services, and the by implication, healthcare education. This innovation clearly has the potential to help ensure future healthcare professionals acknowledge that learning from with so-called ‘experts by experience’ can enhance their practice and contribute to preventing issues highlighted by the Francis report from occurring in the future.
Impact
This project is just over one year old and is still in its relatively early stages. I have received anecdotal evidence of positive feedback from students, peers and the service user/carers involved thus far. Clearly there is the potential for more considered impact over time.
Dissemination
- By staff briefing sessions internally.
- Externally, I have presented details of the innovation to a recent meeting of the HEA LEN (lived experience network) special interest group.