For the past three years, the Patient and Community Voices project has brought students from 16 disciplines—including medicine, nursing, social work, pharmacy, occupational therapy and counselling psychology—together with people living with chronic conditions such as arthritis, mental illness, epilepsy and HIV/AIDS.
“Patients and clients have always been involved in health professional education, but usually in a passive role as part of bedside teaching and clinical training,” says Angela Towle, an associate professor in the Faculty of Medicine and co-director of the Division of Health Care Communication in the College of Health Disciplines.
“They’d been, for lack of a better word, audio-visual aids.”
And despite an increase of patient participation over the past 20 years—speaking to students as a guest lecturer, for example—Towle says the project was designed to encourage the wealth of expertise and experiences from the community to “reach in” to the university, in contrast to the traditional university “outreach” approach.
Small groups of 10 – 15 students per workshop ensure an intimate and safe environment where patients, family members and their community advocates can share personal experiences that get at the heart of living 24/7 with an ailment. Funding from the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund has helped deliver 10 workshops with organizations such as the Canadian Mental Health Association, the BC Persons With AIDS Society and the Indian Residential School Survivors Society. Feedback from participants has been overwhelmingly positive.
“It is helpful to hear from patients what aspects of the conditions affect [them] most as this ‘priority’ list may be different from the priorities outlined in the therapeutic plans in textbooks,” said one medical student.
“We learned to be sensitive to that particular population . . . the barriers they face and what things we could change structurally as social workers to accommodate,” said a social work student.
Towle says the workshops have also invigorated community educators from a wide range of disease and disability services and multicultural groups.
“It was an experience that built my confidence and made me feel I was a worthwhile person with something to contribute,” said one community educator.
“The experience made something positive of their illness and disability,” says Towle. “For our students to experience that catharsis along with their peers in related disciplines that they may not otherwise come in contact with but who will be co-providers of health care in their future careers, that’s invaluable.”
The next Patient and Community Voices workshop is scheduled for November. The project is also organizing Allies in Health Care: 2nd Annual Community & Patient Fair for Health Professional Education on October 28th as part of Celebrate Learning Week.
Visit http://meetingofexperts.org/ for more information.
