Health professional education that fully integrates patient and community expertise and lived experience to maximise health and social outcomes.

Mission

1. We work in partnership to include diverse, autonomous and authentic voices of patients in the education of health and social care professionals so that the care delivered is genuinely patient-centred.

2. We advocate for patients as active collaborators – teachers, assessors, curriculum developers and educational decision makers.

Choosing “Patient”

Choosing to include the term “Patient” in our organization’s name involved extensive debate and consideration. “Patient” has historically conveyed a power imbalance in the patient-health care provider relationship. While we respect the intent of those who choose not to use the term, the founders of our organization ultimately opted to use it for several reasons:

• a wide familiarity with the term facilitates communication with health care educators;
• individuals are accustomed to being identified as a “Patient”;
• an emphasis on patient expertise in living with their illness/disability builds on the emerging patient empowerment movement; and
• alternate terms such as consumer, client or customer do not adequately capture the essence of the role.

However, we use the phrase “Patient and Community Educators” whenever possible to reflect two World Health Organization (WHO) principles:

• that ‘health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’; and
• that ‘informed opinion and active co-operation on the part of the public are of the utmost importance in the improvement of the health of the people.’

(WHO Constitution and Principles, 1946)