Category Archive: Uncategorized

Jul 10

Patients/carers impact on academic culture in healthcare education: Transformational or negligible?

This is an important topic which requires a serious debate, not something I can do justice to in a short blog! However, I feel there are some issues I think are worth highlighting. We all recognise now that patient and public involvement (PPI) is important in all levels of healthcare services, research and education. However, exploring the higher …

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Sep 14

What does REAL patient involvement look like in a Healthcare educational institution?

It’s high time for reflection and review. I have been leading the Experts by Experience group for a year now (with some brilliant colleagues!) and it’s high time I took a look at what the group has and hasn’t achieved over the last year and what it perhaps could achieve over the next year. So, …

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Apr 15

Successful PPI in Healthcare education: Is it about identity, values, culture?

Recently I attended the latest meeting of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) Lived Experience Network. This is a vibrant grouping of academics, patients/service users and carers that meet three times a year to share good practice within healthcare PPI in education in different educational institutions around the country. The host institute will usually ‘showcase’ their …

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Feb 03

A new way of producing ‘face to face’ patient teaching sessions:

In my blog last October (‘Using technology to go beyond ‘face to face’ patient/student sessions’) I mentioned using technology as an alternative to ‘face to face’ teaching sessions with patients and students. There may be many reasons why this is preferable to an actual ‘face to face’ session. Perhaps the person has a physical disability …

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Dec 03

How do you measure patient/carer involvement in HEI’s and what is success?

Personally, this blog post for me is part of an on going challenge as I try and embed a culture of involvement within a Healthcare education Faculty. How will I measure success and achievement? Do I use quantitative (numbers) or qualitative (words) measures? Using a hierarchy measurement such as the ladder of involvement is one way of …

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Oct 29

Using technology to go beyond ‘face to face’ patient/student sessions.

My last blog argued that the good old ‘face to face’ session in which a patient talks about their lived experience to students is an example of tokenism if its the only involvement approach used. Too often in the past these sessions have only been used by academics as a way of allowing students to hear …

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Oct 05

What actually IS patient/carer involvement in healthcare education: ‘exploding the myths’.

I am still asked frquently by my academic colleagues to define exactly what is patient/service user/carer involvement in the education of our healthcare professionals. To answer this question i feel I need to turn it around and actually talk about what it isnt. So here is my myth-busting list of what involvement isn’t! Myth 1: ‘ …

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Sep 22

To pay, pay a little, or not to pay: That IS the question!

  A subject that has taken up quite a lot of my time recently is the subject of the payment of those with lived experience who become involved in various ways within healthcare higher education institutions. It must be said here and now that no one person (living or dead!), is intended to be singled …

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Sep 09

The Patient Patient: a little plug for another blog (if that makes sense!)

The Patient Patient (http://thepatientpatient2011.blogspot.co.uk/) is a blog that I would heartily recommend for anyone interested in the whole subject of people empowering themselves to manage their own long term health condition. Healthcare practitioners have so much to learn from those with the lived experience of many years suffering serious health conditions. In my view, true person centred …

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Sep 09

Patient, service user, client or what?

Here’s the thing: What do we call those with lived experience that we invite to contribute to healthcare students learning? There are many labels but are any the right ones?  Ive always had a issue with ‘patient’ since I first learnt about Parson’s ‘sick role’ theory. This is the one that suggests that a person will …

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