The University Institute of Patient Care has launched the first basic training course in Patient Advocacy in collaboration with the UIC Barcelona Chair of Healthcare Management, which will be held at the Sant Cugat Campus. With this course, the University Institute for Patient Care resumes on-site teaching activities aimed at patients and patient associations, which had stopped during the past two years as a result of the pandemic.

As the participation of patients and their representatives make headway at the different levels of the healthcare system, acquiring basic knowledge and skills to participate become extremely important. For this reason, the objective of the curriculum is to ensure that participants gain knowledge about how the healthcare system functions and how existing patient participation structures as well as the practical experience of increasingly participatory healthcare models work. The course also incorporates basic knowledge in techniques and tools necessary to properly exercise patient representation, such as generating knowledge through available information, communication skills, co-creation dynamics and ethics.

With a teaching methodology based mainly on the generation of knowledge from the translation of experience, the course will be carried out under the direction of Dr Maria Dolors Navarro, Director of the Patient Participation and Training Area of the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu, and Carme Ferrer, Patient Experience Manager of the Hospital de Granollers.

The course teaching staff includes professionals from the healthcare and health management sector within the scope of patient experience, patient association members and patients, and professionals from the communication and consulting sector.