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| Cathryn Sloan |
I was really pleased to be selected by the International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC) to deliver an oral poster presentation as part of the International Conference on Integrated Care (ICIC) held in Dublin earlier in May.
The title of the poster was ‘Putting Person Centred Pathways into Practice’ and it described the really powerful work AQuA’s Lived Experience Panel does with our members.
It became really apparent over the three days of the conference that IFIC (and its partners, Health Service Executive, Ireland and the National Clinical and Integrated Care Programmes) had taken the principle of person centred care very seriously and it formed a really strong thread through all of the plenary and workshop sessions.
The conference itself was awarded ‘Patients Included’ Charter status, as it had been co-designed and planned with patients and caregivers. Patients, caregivers and advocates were very much a key part of the programme, and we heard from many about their experiences of care and how integration of health and care services had benefitted them.
There are just too many examples of how people receiving care actively participated in the conference but here a couple that really stood out for me:
Thriving in New York City
During his plenary session, Gary Belkin from New York described the ‘Thrive’ programme which is the mental health plan for New York.
The programme aims to train 250,000 New Yorkers to provide mental health first aid to their communities, empowering all citizens to take action on Mental Health and addiction and shift the focus from punishment to public health awareness.
It was an incredibly powerful example of how people with a lived experience of Mental Health can help build systems of care.
The Dutch Touch to Training
The second example that really resonated with me was the WeLearn programme from the Netherlands; this a pilot programme where patients and clinical students learn together, undertaking training in Shared Decision Making, communication skills amongst other things.
The pilot has demonstrated that medical students gain a far greater understanding of how they can work in partnership with their patients to deliver care more effectively. The programme is about to be rolled out across all medical training.
Often, patients, carers, families and people with a lived experience of care are seen as bystanders in the health process, so it was really heartening to see how the international health and care community is embracing working in partnership!
I am looking forward to next year’s conference in the Netherlands to see how some of the programmes have progressed.
You can share your thoughts with Cathryn on Twitter via @Catieranger or @AQuA_NHS. You can also find out more about AQuA work around Person Centred Care on our website.
