The challenges of involving young people in the planning of a continuing professional development module

Health policy and education directives emphasize the need to involve service users and carers in the design, development and evaluation of programmes of study offered to healthcare students. This must be balanced with ensuring learning meets the needs of the students and the requirements of stakeholders involved in the commissioning of educational programmes. This project was undertaken to elicit teenagers and young people with cancer views in relation to the content of a continuing professional development module entitled ‘adolescents with cancer’ and analysis of the students’ evaluations of the module. The young people identified topics they felt were important to include in the module, with an understanding of and using humour given the highest priority. Making changes to the module in light of the young people’s suggestions resulted in apprehensions for the module team. The challenges included developing the knowledge and skills to effectively deliver a session relating to the use of humour in relation to caring for teenagers and young people with cancer, and ensuring changes to the module content were appropriate to meet the needs of the students. Overall the student’s evaluations of the module and the session relating to humour in nursing were positive.