Paul Clift talks about being a Patients Representative at King’s College Hospital

Date

Thursday 9th January, 2014

Time

6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Location

Details

Paul works as a Patients Representative at King’s College Hospital in south London. He will be talking about the role of the Patients Representative and how the job has changed over time, and also about his involvement with the Clinical Reference Group for HIV.

‘My current job title is Patients Representative, much the same as I had been doing in Brighton. Problem is, since I started doing it at King’s, the job description has changed quite a bit so that ‘representative’ is now something of a misnomer. In practice I do a lot of one-to-one support in clinic, usually around new diagnosis and/or starting meds. I also do support in Brixton prison from time to time. I’m also doing more off-site work in community settings in south London. The main challenges here at King’s relate to cultural diversity (about two-thirds of my fellow patients here are from Sub-Saharan Africa) and differing interpretations of ‘medicine’ that don’t necessarily coincide with what the doctors are talking about.

Also for the last year or so I have been one of the community members of the Clinical Reference Group for HIV, and am happy talking about that as well, especially about how we try to inform wider community about CRG decisions.’

The talk followed by Q&A