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. (C) 2001 Harcourt Publishers Ltd.