Carl O’Loughlin has been a member of AQuA’s Lived Experience Panel since 2015. As he starts his training to become a qualified mental health nurse, he shares his experience of working with us for the past three years.
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| Carl O'Loughlin |
I first came into contact with AQuA in June 2015, when I was working as an involvement representative on a peer support project in the Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (CWP). Through this project I met Paul Greenwood, AQuA’s Mental Health Improvement Advisor; who was running a Restraint Reduction initiative on one of the CWP inpatient wards.
During our meeting, I shared with him my work with CWP, together with my own lived experience of using mental health services and my professional background; where I had experience of quality improvement.
Paul also told me that AQuA was forming a Lived Experience panel and after applying to join this and an interview, I was pleased to be offered the role as one of five Lived Experience Affiliates on this panel.
At my first Panel meeting, it was evident each of us on the panel had a significant and varied range of lived experience of healthcare services. Since then, we’ve all been welcomed by AQuA staff as a fundamental and key part of the organisation.
We’ve also had quarterly meetings with either the Chief Executive or Directors, to update them on the work we do with programmes and AQuA members; which demonstrates how important AQuA value the work the panel does.
Since joining, I’ve received significant training on everything from Human Factors, Introduction to Improvement, Shared Decision Making, Dementia Awareness, Safety and Mortality and Motivational Interviewing. AQuA has also facilitated my Experience Based Design Coaches training.
My presentation and report writing skills have also improved significantly, together with my knowledge of health and social care services and how they are organised and operate. All of this training, skills development and knowledge will prove invaluable to my nursing studies and any future nursing roles.
During this time I’ve had the privilege to work on a range of programmes, including Whole System Flow, Mental Health, Restraint Reduction, Safety, Academy and Shared Decision Making.
There’s a range of work that I’m proud of from my time with AQuA. The most prominent of these is our work with three systems as part of the 2017/18 Whole System Flow programme. Together as a Panel, we’ve spent the last six months visiting and interviewing service users and carers from each of the three systems.
This work has given us a deep insight into what it is really like to be a service user or carer using each system, and allowed us to produce a detailed lived experience report for each system.
Each of their project teams have fed back that these ‘real’ experiences gathered by the Panel has been the most important part of each project. It’s been clear that diagnosing issues and problems in each of these systems wouldn’t have been possible without these insights.
This piece of work has been incredibly rewarding and enjoyable personally; with the patients really valuing the opportunity to share their experiences with us.
All in all, it’s been an absolute pleasure to work with AQuA as a Lived Experience Affiliate for the last three years. I’ve found AQuA to be a highly forward-thinking organisation at all times, especially with regard to quality improvement and co-production.
Staff have really welcomed all members of the Panel, and have actively worked to co-produce and embed lived experience into their programme design and delivery. They practice ‘real’ co-production, are happy to receive challenges and feedback from panel members, and use this to actively improve their work.
I’m certainly going to miss working for AQuA and everyone that I work with there, but I’m also excited to be starting a new chapter in my life with my nursing studies about to commence.
Feel free to share your thoughts and comments with Carl, or wish him good luck with his nursing training, via Twitter @Carloloughlin1 or @AQuA_NHS.
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