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Consumer-led nurse training

In 2015, the Commission worked to identify strategies to increase the effective participation of lived experience academics in the education and training of mental health nurses.

Participation by people with a lived experience in all aspects of their care and recovery benefits those people and the mental health care system as a whole. This is because it encourages services to become more responsive to the needs of people with a lived experience based on:

  • their own lived experience of service use, and
  • first-hand knowledge of what best facilitates their individual and collective recovery.

The involvement of people with a lived experience in the education of health professionals has been identified as a potentially effective strategy in influencing more positive attitudes which in turn can lead to more recovery-oriented care.

An issues paper, Consumer participation in the Education and Training of Mental Health Nurses was prepared by then Mental Health and Drug Advisory Council member Professor Brenda Happell.

Roundtable participants agreed to:

  • affirm the value of lived experience academics in the co-production of education and training of mental health staff
  • undertake to use their collective capacity to see lived experience academics participating as equal partners in the design and delivery of education for mental health nurses, and that this become the expected standard in Queensland.