Service users and carers sometimes bring a challenging perspective to the classroom, offering psychosocial rather than medical interpretations, highlighting the harm that health services can do and drawing attention to failings in care. Such contributions need to be carefully crafted to stimulate, rather than crush students’ motivation to become competent and compassionate nurses. Where academic staff are involved in co-facilitating learning, they sometimes help by monitoring this issue and offering balance where it is required.
Reasons for and against live presentations in comparison with recorded media are set out in this guide. A complete diet of online materials may be appropriate for an online course of study, but where academic staff appear ‘in the flesh’ in front of students, it is reasonable to expect the same principle will apply to service users and carers.
Re-usable learning objects
- See Health Education England‘s introduction to involving service users and carers in nurse education here
- “Baby First”
- “Hello, my name is Tom.” Tom has Autistic Spectrum disorder (ASD). This RLO won the 2009 Fiona Law prize for student-led innovation awarded by the National Network of Learning Disability Nursing.
- “Little things make a big difference” Communication between a person with learning disabilities and a health professional.
- “My house, my rights”. Health care staff disregard the rights of people with learning disabilities in their home.
- “Expressing sexuality”.
- “Patient Voices.”
- “Involving Service Users and Carers in your teaching“
Websites that offer patient stories
- Care Opinion– 170,000 stories that altogether have been viewed over 83 million times – 100,000 visits a week. (Used to be called Patient Opinion)
- Patient Stories
- Patient Voices
- Patient Commando
- The history of learning disability services
- Animated accounts of mental health experiences
- Healthtalk Online
- Story telling in the NHS here.
- Patients like me
- The Royal College of Psychiatrists have produced some podcasts by service users and carers here.
- Hello Grief
- A variety of video stories from Bournemouth University
- The Cultivating Compassion website offers a range of resources, including digital stories on how to create and sustain a compassionate workforce.
A bibliography of first-person accounts of madness. See also the I Am Whole collection of stories written by people living with mental health issues.
- At the University of Greenwich, students are encouraged to follow user-led organisations or key individuals who bring a service user or carer perspective.
Recent Comments