OzHelp Foundation

Just reporting on some positive news from me - a while back, I wrote a 'guide to life in the MHU' and a 'spotter's guide to professionals you may meet while in the MHU', while in outpatient. These documents were championed by a peer worker, who took my drafts into the inpatient ward and asked the inpatients for their input on what should be in those two guides and how they should be presented to new inpatients. The peer worker reworked the documents about four times with the feedback from the current inpatients, and they all were very positive about the potential of the guides to be helpful. I thought they could help newbies get acclimated to the wards more quickly, and reduce the teaching burden on experienced inpatients.

The peer worker has shared the documents within her professional networks, with a view for other peer teams in other hospitals to localise the guides for their own locations - e.g. is there caffeine in the coffee? how does the laundry work?

One of the people she passed the guides on to was an academic Doctor, who is stoked by the idea of consumer-created patient education resources, and the Doctor will make a research project for her post-graduate students to evaluate how our guides can be implemented in the nursing space to assist people with their hospital admission!