Aims
The aim of this guide is to promote, support and provide guidance for the increased involvement of service users and their carers in the education of students across the various health professions in the School of Health Sciences.
There are many examples of good practice underway within the School, some of which are highlighted on this Community Engagement weblog, alongside links to various useful resources that can inspire and support user and carer involvement in teaching and learning.
We hope that these guidelines will help staff further develop the structured involvement of users and carers in the recruitment and selection of students, development of curricula, the delivery of teaching and learning activities, the evaluation of educational input, and the assessment of student learning, practice and development.
Service user and carer involvement in all research activities is also being encouraged and information and guidelines can be found on this blog.
Terms
The debate as to what to call the person who experiences healthcare continues, as each term – ‘patient’, ‘client’, ‘consumer’, ‘prosumer’ etc – has its difficulties (Herxheimer and Goodare 1999) and the language used can change rapidly with different terms used to mean different things in different contexts and countries (Morrow et al 2012).
‘Service User’ and ‘Carer’ are the core terms used here, as they have the advantage of appearing in other local documents. The separate delineation of ‘carer’ is intended to highlight that views and experiences of users and carers are distinct and may need to be considered separately (Simpson 1999).
It may be useful to think about how a ‘service user’ differs from ‘someone with a diagnosis attached’. Clarity of role – both on the part of service provider and service user – seems to be vital. Is the service user being asked to contribute their experience of the services offered to them, or their experience of their health problems? Both these inputs may be useful in an educational setting, but it is important to be clear on exactly what is being asked of the user or carer.