Our peer worker Mandy Long attended the Health Workforce education day at Atherton, Cairns.
Below is Mandy speaking about the incredible day:
“The Health Workforce team ran an extremely professional program, and the level of student engagement and open mindedness of the professionals was inspiring. The day started with the lived experience segment and then students broke into groups working their way through sets of professionals sharing their knowledge eg: psychologist and what a session could look like; the GP’s, speech therapist, OT and nurses follow suit. The dietitian did a case study and students got to learn and input. I was fortunate to be able to sit through each rotating session, so informative as I usually only hear client’s perspectives.
A couple of common threads were what do we do with people aged 10-16y eg before EDQ (besides CYMHS & Headspace) and when to contact EDQ / other support. I spoke with all of the professionals and handed out some flyers, a number of them were not aware that EDQ existed and were very pleased to know that we worked remotely/online and had Carer support. Students also chatted to me, asking questions during breaks and other.
During debrief at the end, one 2nd year uni student commented that the lived experience segment would now change her patient care to much more ‘person centered’.
Personally, I was super encouraged for the region and the next generation of health workers.”