Oct 17, 2019
This episode features Brett Scholz (Medical School,
The Australian National University, Acton, ACT, Australia).
Consumer involvement is required by policy at all levels of
health services. Some health disciplines have
well-established research programmes focusing on consumer
leadership. Palliative care is philosophically
consumer-centred, but there has been less of a focus on
consumer leadership at the systemic level of palliative care
services. The review demonstrates that consumer leadership is
an emerging practice in palliative care services and
academia. Despite the potential challenges of consumer
leadership, consumers are motivated to be engaged with the
sector. Consumers are still not as involved in setting
agendas in palliative care as policies require. The review
findings extend understandings of how to better support consumer
leaders, suggesting palliative care service providers educated
by consumer academics may be more aware of power imbalances and
thus later be able to use their influence for further consumer
leadership. To meet policy requirements and realise benefits
brought by consumers’ perspectives, more research conducted with
(rather than on) consumers in palliative care is
needed. Policy requires partnerships with consumers at all
stages of palliative service planning, implementation, delivery and
evaluation, but does not provide a guide for best practice
about how such partnerships are done without tokenism.
Full paper available from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0269216319854012
If you would like to record a podcast about your published (or
accepted) Palliative Medicine paper, please contact Dr Amara
Nwosu: anwosu@liverpool.ac.uk