Issue 33

National Recovery & Outcomes Conference 2015

Entering the hall, having to sign and collect our name tags, I was overcome with anxiety similar to the feeling on the first day of school. Sitting in the back row, I was able to see everyone coming in. Not knowing anyone around, except the people I was sitting with made me a little edgy. But as I asked around I realised that I was surrounded by patients and staff, albeit from other hospitals, but what difference does that make. I slowly started to realise that half the people in this hall probably felt the same way I did. After having scoped the place the others and I started wondering, after having noticed that some people were coming back from a side room with goodie bags, we all looked at each other and said that we had to get some. And although some of us came back with more stuff than the rest of us, I couldn't help but be drawn in by some of the stands set up by other services. Having looked at a couple, I was surprised to see that, the ideas and initiatives that other services put on show, to represent what they had done and were continuing to do in their hospitals, were no different than what we are doing, just packaged and worded differently. This was cemented even further when patients plucked up enough courage to say what they were doing, and again, it was what we are doing. The core values, physical health and wellbeing, the groups that are put on for us, all of it, is being done in other hospitals. After discovering this, a notion occurred to me, we must be a front runner with all that we do as a hospital and the patients here drive us forward, with a little help from staff of course.

Kris

More info @ : https://www.rethink.org/get-involved/conferences-and-seminars/national-recovery-and-outcomes-conference-2015