11.20.07
Are these representatives really users?
What did the swan say to the other swan as it crossed the road? No this isn’t a joke and actually I don’t know the answer, but this afternoon I did witness the bizarre sight of 2 swans and 4 geese crossing a road to get to the other side of a river separated by a small road bridge. They couldn’t cross underneath the road as water levels were quite high, so the road was the most convenient means of travel and it was great to see a couple of cars being made to wait for the crossing to happen. Boy my days are becoming exciting!
I had just left a meeting of the maternity services liaison committee for which I am the PCT rep and general dogsbody for the group (or so it seems). I have no problem with writing the notes, or with organising the venues, sending out agendas etc. But I do get the distinct impression that I am being viewed as something provided for their use because we are obliged to provide it and some of those people are jolly well going to speak to me as if I am just the hired help! Of course it might be me and my sense of inadequacy coming out, but I don’t really have problems with confidence in the normal run of things so I think my instincts may well be correct. The problem to me lies in the definition of user representative. To me a user rep for a group which is about maternity services is someone who has used or might in the future use the services of a maternity unit. So the fact that many of the so called users are actually teachers and people who run groups for the National childbirth Trust, but whose childrearing days are confined to ancient history rather grates on me. The problem is that national guidelines say that actually these people can and should be classed as users and it is my own issues that make it not feel right to me. They work with pregnant women and new mums and they do know about the issues but still it seems kind of odd.
The involvement of the public in the planning and reorganisation of health services is important and necessary. But it is important that we use the right people to help us with that work. Luckily in this case we have a number of just the kind of people who have recently used the services and can truly represent those who will use it in the future but I wonder how we manage the fine line between working (all be it on a voluntary basis) for a charity organisation and truly being able to call yourself a user representative.
Mr Ian said,
November 22, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Since I am not in the UK nor claiming child benefit, I thought I’d reply to this post rather than the latter.
Service user representatives are a wonderful idea. As good an idea as seeking medical or nursing advice on how to run the health service.
I guess that’s why national guidelines allow ‘representatives’ to be pooled from sources that are vicariously-related-to-users-but-not-actually-a-user group. If they insisted on representatives being the actual users, then they’d be advocating for the NHS to be run by practitioners who actually know what the job requires and not those vicariously-related-to-the-job-that-needs-doing-but-not-actually-doing-it
Makes perfect sense to me.
Julie said,
November 22, 2007 at 6:48 pm
LOL Mr Ian