User involvement in mental health branch education: client review presentations

This paper will present the work of users, students and lecturers involved in the delivery of Mental Health pre-registration education, focusing on client assessment. Users from local mental health representative organizations, attend a series of college-based sessions to evaluate student's client review presentations, in which individual students explicitly and critically reflect upon a mental health assessment of a client in which they have participated. The user contributions are intended to raise student's awareness of client-centred perspectives, particularly in terms of the various possible interpretations that may be attributed to assessment data gathered about the client. The sessions seek to develop a learning approach, which will develop and consolidate a partnership in curriculum delivery between mental health service users and nursing education. This method of working has been evaluated by a previous study, and indicates that this method has an important influence on student's approaches to identifying clients needs and subsequent care delivery. This paper will focus on the organizational pre-requisites that are desirable, to implement this method of teaching and learning, including philosophical issues, contract arrangements, classroom activities, supervision, consideration of ethical dilemmas and reflective outcomes.