School of Nursing and Midwifery
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About the Group
Who is involved?
- Anyone can be involved – all of us may use health services sometimes!
- Elderly people, people who have learning disabilities, people who have used mental health and other health services, carers, parents, young people, and sometimes children can be involved.
- People who have had some experiences of being a patient (in or out of hospital), of using health services, or who have cared for a family member who has been ill.
- People who are involved live locally. Meet some of the group members.
- Anyone with a personal interest in health and health services.
- If you are interested in joining the group, please see the contact info at the bottom.
What do we do?
- Get a chance to say what we feel about different issues surrounding healthcare training and curriculum development.
- Speak to groups of student nurses and answer questions about our experiences.
- Sit in the classroom to see what is being taught and what the students say.
- Help assess students' presentations or how well they do their work experience.
- Say what we think student nurses / midwives should learn about a particular subject, and help to make sure that students learn things that are important for service users, patients, and carers.
- Attend open days and meet people who want to become student nurses / midwives.
- Work / comment on research projects and proposals.
- Attend meetings about how to involve patients, service users and carers in the School of Nursing and Midwifery.
- Help the School to involve service users in School business.
- Sit on smaller working groups to develop parts of the work.
- Attend conferences about user and care work to listen to other people talk about their work.
- Present at conferences to share good practice.
Why we are involved
- To shape what is taught into 'real life' meaning.
- To help students 'see the whole person'.
- To help students appreciate and respect people as individuals.
- To enable students to learn directly from people who have been patients or used health services, in order to complement learning from books and teachers.
- Although we recognise that student nurses and midwives spend a lot of their course in real work settings and spend time with service users, patients, families, and carers (which is really important), it's also important to learn from service users and carers who are not 'their' patients as such, and who have had a chance to reflect on their experiences and are comfortable talking about them to other people.
- To enable students to get used to working with service users and carers on an equal and regular basis and to get used to members of the public being involved in their own healthcare.
- Service users and carers are involved with health services in lots of different ways, and involvement in nursing education is part of a bigger picture that we want to develop locally.
- Ultimately, we want to help students to become good nurses and midwives, and to make health services better for all of us.
When and where?
- The User and Carer Groups are diverse and meet at a variety of places in the local area (e.g. community centres, schools) including the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Clinical Education Centre, at the City General Hospital, Newcastle Road, Staffordshire, ST4 6QG.
- We meet in smaller groups to work on particular projects and then feedback to the School of Nursing and Midwifery and wider University.
- Sometimes we join in teaching sessions with students, all of which are arranged at mutually convenient dates and times.
- All teaching sessions are in the daytime on weekdays, meetings may vary to suit the needs of the individuals attending.
- All meetings provide refreshments for anyone attending.
- We have a celebration event once a year.
What we have achieved
- We wrote a strategy for the School to develop user and carer involvement.
- We developed an action plan (reviewed annually) for user and carer involvement in the School.
- We have presented at conferences e.g. Royal College of Nursing (RCN) sharing our experiences of how we inform nursing and midwifery education and research.
Practical things
- The School of Nursing and Midwifery pays travel expenses for people who are involved and attend the meetings.
- We try to make meetings accessible for anyone who wants to be involved.
- All our meetings are accessible for people who use wheelchairs.
- We want to organise training courses for people who would like to be involved in topics such as speaking in groups.
- We try to give people whatever support they need to be actively involved in this work.
- We welcome enquiries from anyone who thinks they might want to join us.
If you would like more information, please contact:
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Sue Ashby, |
