“[I became involved because of] my personal interest in valuing the voice of the patient and thinking that the best way to provide care for people who are sick and are dealing with things such as HIV is to listen to them and their perspectives.” — Nursing Professor
“You don’t really know exactly what the person’s going through until they talk about what’s going on…that’s really extremely valuable.” – Nursing Student
“The research should lead to diverse end-users of the health care system having the power and a mechanism to have sustained influence and participation in the education of health professionals.”
EVENING: the frayed edges, RIPPLES of Recovery, released in April 2012, is the second anthology by the Vancouver-based Recovery Narrative Project. The Recovery Narrative Project is a peer-led writing circle for mental health consumers who wish to share their stories of strength and recovery. Authors of the second anthology include Jude Swanson, Margo Robinson, Susan J Katz, Susan Trapp, and Zerom Seyoum.
For more information, please visit the Recovery Narrative Project’s blog.
The Interprofessional Health Mentors program was featured in the March 2012 edition of UBC Reports. The article is entitled A new window on patients’ struggles and written by Brian Kladko. The full March 2012 edition of UBC Reports can be found here (PDF).
Photo credit: UBC Faculty of Medicine/Martin Dee
This report assesses the successes and challenges of the UBC Patient and Community Voices in Health Professional Education project from the perspective of community partners involved in planning and delivering the project. This evaluation also explores other ways to continue to engage people from the community in health professional education. Read full report (pdf).
Patient and Community Voices workshops were featured in the Spring 2011 edition of the UBC Medicine magazine. The Spring 2011 edition can be found here.
“Patients have long been a part of the education of health professionals, but they have usually been relegated to a passive role, to be queried and examined — serving, in the words of Associate Professor of Medicine Angela Towle, as “audio-visual aids.”
Not so in the Patient and Community Voices project.
Elevating patients into the role of educators, the project seeks to have patients, their relatives and caregivers, and other community members take an active part in the making of physicians, physical therapists, occupational therapists, audiologists, speech therapists, midwives and other health professionals.”
It’s been an active 6 months for the PCV Project! At the moment we are busy writing a number of summary reports about our activities, which we will share with you in March. But in case you can’t wait that long, here is a recap of what we have been up to.
The 2nd Annual Community and Patient Fair was a big success! Despite the rainy weather, on Thursday October 28th, 33 community organizations and over 400 visitors converged at the West Atrium of the Life Sciences Centre from 10:00am-4:00pm to share community health resources and to learn from each other. We doubled our attendance from 2009. It was amazing to see students from many different health disciplines speaking with people from the community, many of whom had the chronic health concerns represented at their booths. These are the types of learning experiences that students will be able to apply to their future practice.
The Fair also brought out the creative bug in our community exhibitors. Everyone enjoyed the various games, toys, prizes and experiential exhibits. Every hour we held a prize draw for some fantastic items (hello 2011 entertainment book, hello amazing coffee, hello toasty fleece pullovers and stylish t-shirts, yup we are talking about you workshop certificate and gift cards!). The prizes were generously provided by our donors: Ethical Bean Coffee, White Spot/UBC Food Services, UBC Bookstore, Save-on-Foods, Choices Markets, PeerNetBC, Mahoney’s, Scleroderma Association of BC, and the Developmental Disabilities Association.
This year we also ran 5 Patient Panels, where patients shared their stories and answered students’ questions. Students from Dental Hygiene and Social Work attended the panels as part of their course. With a total attendance of 104 people, the panels were a big hit!
We cannot overstate the contribution of our wonderful student and staff volunteers who helped make the day a success. Thank you to everyone who came and we hope to see you at the 2011 Fair!
The 2nd Annual Community and Patient Fair was organized by the Division of Health Care Communication and the College of Health Disciplines as part of UBC Celebrate Learning Week. It was funded through the UBC Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund and the Social Accountability and Community Engagement Initiative of the Faculty of Medicine.
Over the past few of months we held 2 workshops: a workshop on HIV in November 2010 and a workshop on Mental Health in January 2011. The turnout for both workshops was fantastic. We reached our capacity for the HIV workshop very quickly, and I am happy to say that despite blizzard-like weather conditions, 20 students came out to learn from our Community Educators! Presented by the BC Persons with AIDS Society and the Positive Women’s Network, the stories told that day were personal and powerful, and left a strong impression on our students.
Community Educators from the Richmond Mental Health Consumers and Friends Society led our 2nd workshop. Presented mainly for a Mental Health Nursing class taught by Prof. J. Craig Phillips, the workshop attracted students from a number of other health disciplines. The shared experiences of mental illness and recovery were candid and compelling. Everyone at the workshop came away learning something new about mental health.
We are currently working on developing a new workshop with the School of Audiology and Speech Sciences Aphasia Mentoring Project for June 2011. We will be posting more news soon, so stay tuned!
The Patient and Community Voices project gets highlighted in UBC Reports, under the catchy title: Turning Patients into Professors!
Turning Patients into Professors
By Brian Lin
“A UBC project is helping future doctors, nurses, social workers and other health professionals learn from those they are being trained to serve.”
