What matters to US (Users of Services) in shared care and decision making

Abstract

Successful collaborative work in 4 West Yorkshire Universities related to service user & carer engagement in higher education led to a successful bid for research funding to the Assessment & Learning in Practice Settings (ALPS) Centre for Excellence in Teaching & Learning (CETL). ALPS is a collaborative programme between five Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s) with a proven track record for excellence in learning and teaching in health and social care. This includes the University of Bradford, University of Huddersfield, the University of Leeds, Leeds Metropolitan University and the University of York St John. Further information about the programme can be found at the central website www.ALPSCETL. leeds.ac.uk . The aim of ALPS is to ensure that students graduating from courses in health and social care are fully equipped to perform confidently and competently at the start of their professional careers and so improve patient care. The aim and method of the research was to establish a collaborative inquiry process with service users and carers to explore what professionals need to do to help patients/ clients and carers play their part in shared care and decision making. Action learning groups were held with service users and carers that informed the development of a Delphi type survey which was circulated to a wider group of service users and carers, students and academics related to a number of health and social care courses. The strengths of this research are: • That it was service user led/focused 82 • Dialogue with service users and carers that followed at iterative, reflective process. • The collaborative, inter disciplinary nature. • Development of reusable learning objects - podcasts relative to all health and social care professions