Call for Abstracts

The conference is about practice, innovation and theory that embeds the patient/client voice in health and social care education. It is an opportunity to share examples of how health and social care education be enriched by patient involvement. Over three days, participants will present examples of collaborations between educators and patient/community groups that bring the authentic and autonomous voices and lived experiences of patients into the education of current and future health and social care professionals. The conference will examine progress in the field since the last conference in 2015. Conference attendees will have opportunities to contribute to a set of practical ‘how to’ guides that are expected to result from the conference.

Audience

The conference is international and interprofessional in scope. Interested professions will include: dental hygiene, dentistry, dietetics, genetic counselling, kinesiology, nursing, medicine, midwifery, occupational therapy, pharmacy, physical therapy, population and public health, psychology, radiography, social work, and other health and social care disciplines. We welcome participants and presenters who are:

• Health and social care educators and practitioners
• Students (undergraduate or graduate) / trainees
• Patients/clients/service users
• Family members/carers
• Patient advocates / community organizers
• Policy makers
• Researchers

Themes

Abstracts are invited on examples of “patient”* involvement in health and social care professional education across the continuum of education (e.g. undergraduate, postgraduate, practice education, continuing professional development, in-service training) including, but not limited to:

• Educational initiatives that have been implemented and evaluated
• Work in progress / innovations without formal evaluation as yet
• Descriptions of progress and lessons learned over the last ten years
• Patient experiences as educators, curriculum developers and assessors of health professionals
• Working with diverse patient populations
• Student / trainee experiences of learning with and from patients
• Assessment of impact of patient involvement in education
• Scalability and sustainability of patient involvement in education, including funding models
• Overcoming barriers and challenging times in patient involvement
• Emerging trends and innovations in patient involvement in education
• Institutional recognition and supports for patient involvement in education
• Patient involvement in interprofessional learning, distributed education, or continuing professional development

We recognize that conference participants will be at different stages in their journey to involve patients in health and social care education. We especially invite submissions that focus on sharing experiences and resources, and lessons learned from both successes and failures, that will be of relevance to conference attendees.

*We use the term patient for the sake of brevity, to include people with health problems (clients, consumers, people living with [condition], community members, their caregivers (including parents and family), and healthy people (community members, lay people, well women, etc). Patients may be individual educators or work in organized groups set up to deliver education and provide peer support. Some education may be delivered by organizations in the community.

Formats

• Symposia/Panel Presentations: 90 minutes. These involve up to 5 contributors presenting diverse perspectives on a particular topic followed by discussion.
• Roundtable informal discussions: 60 minutes. Roundtable facilitated discussion on a topic relevant to the conference themes, focusing on challenges / barriers that have been encountered, strategies to address problems and lessons learned. 
• Oral Presentations: 20 minutes (15-minute presentation and 5-minute discussion)
• Workshops: 90 minutes (interactive sessions that engage participants in knowledge exchange and skill-building)
• Posters: The posters will be displayed for the duration of the conference. Poster presenter(s) are expected to attend in person during the scheduled poster presentation times to facilitate interaction.  
• Creative Arts: There is no prescribed format, and presenters may use their 15- or 30-minute presentation time (to be specified and justified in the abstract submission) in whatever way they wish as long as the emphasis focuses on creativity, performance, and/or audience engagement. Submissions can be of two major types:
  • Visual Arts: Photography, video, paintings, small 3-dimensional objects, or other similar mediums (Note that for accepted visual arts items, security of the item on-site, shipping expenses, as well as display set-up materials will be the responsibility of the presenter)
  • Performance Arts: Personal reflections, stories of one’s own or others’ experiences of health or illness narratives, short theatrical performances, innovative interactive exercises, poetry, puppetry, music, dance or dramatic representations of dialogues or experiences.

Peer Review Criteria

All abstracts will be peer reviewed according to the following core criteria:

• Aligns with the conference themes
• Includes student, patient and health professional perspectives
• Demonstrates innovation and creativity
• Provides conference attendees with the opportunity to gain practical knowledge and skills (workshops)

Priority will be given to abstracts demonstrating meaningful engagement and inclusion of patient perspectives, and inclusion of one or more patients and / or students on the author or presenter team. We will notify authors of their acceptance by May 22, 2025.