Employment

In a hospital, individuals living with chronic pain have been employed and embedded in the pain management team alongside clinicians and administrators as Lived Experience Partners to improve care for people with chronic pain. The role of the Lived Experience Partners includes reviewing patient education materials, ensuring that they are clear and accessible, designing and facilitating peer support programs and providing input into the appointment scheduling system to reduce patient burden. Contributions from the Lived Experience Partners led to the use of patient-led goal setting as part standard treatment plans to ensure personalised care. As a result, the pain management team saw higher patient satisfaction scores, increased clinic attendance and improved outcomes for patients.

To ensure consumer perspectives are embedded within the research that is being conducted, a diabetes research institute employs Lived Experience Advisors who work alongside researchers, clinicians and staff members. The Lived Experience Advisors play a key role in co-developing research priorities and patient-relevant outcomes, reviewing grant proposals to ensure meaningful consumer involvement in study designs and help to translate research findings into easy to understand outputs, improving public engagement and research dissemination. As a result, the outputs of the research have had greater impact on the community, the institute has the largest and most active consumer network due to strong community trust and reputation, which has led to increased participation in clinical studies. Researchers have also found that consumer perspectives strengthened the relevance and real-world impact of their work, bridging the gap between lab based science and practical diabetes care.