Mr Dale Forbes¹, Mrs Anne Darton²

¹Agency of Clinical Innovation Statewide Burn Injury Service Consumer Representative, , , ²Agency of Clinical Innovation Statewide Burn Injury Service, 

Abstract:

The National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards provide a national mandate for Health Services to engage meaningfully with consumers. However, there is no consistent approach to achieving this in the provision of a clinical burns service across Australia.

This presentation highlights the vital role of consumer representatives in a burns service. The shared value can be realised when clinicians and consumers partner to co design innovative health care improvements.

Consumer engagement provides an empathetic and respectful framework that brings together professional knowledge and best practice evidence and lived experience to design, implement and evaluate improvements, activities, products and services.

The NSW Statewide Burn Injury Service has embedded consumer participation in its burn service using a number of strategies. These are based on the principles of equal partnership, openness, respect, empathy and designing together. Key initiatives include the SHARE Peer Support Program, Patient Reported Experience Measures Project and the Beyond Burns Online Hub Project.

Lastly, this presentation discusses the emerging evidence around improved outcomes and how burn survivors only stand to benefit as clinical burns services work more collaboratively as a network partnering with consumers.

Biography:

Dale Forbes is an Aboriginal man from Rural NSW. Dale has a lived experience as a Burn Survivor in addition to growing up in Out of Home Care. Dale has been heavily involved in volunteering and charitable work in burns sector for many years. Dale is currently finishing a Bachelor of Social Work while working as an Aboriginal Senior Project Officer with the NSW Department of Family and Community Services. Dale has been a driving force behind the Beyond Burns project from the initial conception through to the design and development and has a deep commitment to collaborative consumer centred approaches