By Jo Ball,
Our May YPAGne meeting had a strong emphasis on technology. Dr Heather Lambert came to discuss the increasing problem of young adults forgetting to take their medication, due to changes in their lifestyle. Researchers have developed an Aparito app prototype to help children with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) remember to take their medication. They asked YPAGne for their views on the idea and if they would be willing to take part in trialing the app. With the help of the psychology team, researchers created the idea of a Thought Jar. The Thought Jar is to be used by YPAGne students for eight weeks where twice a day, roughly twelve hours apart, they will be prompted by their Aparito app to write a thought on a post it note and put it in their Thought Jar. Using a Thought Jar enables students to experience the inconvenience that children with CKD face, by interrupting what they were doing at a specific time each day to complete the action. (But the action of taking medication is replaced with writing a thought on a post it note for YPAGne participants!) This trial will help to see if the app is useful at prompting individuals in remembering to complete the action.
Next, the Paediatric Musculoskeletal team came to ask for YPAGne member’s thoughts on their three educational resources; pmmonline.org, pGALS app for medical students and their e-learning modules for GPs, paediatricians and medical students. These resources have been developed to lessen the delay in access to care, which has been identified as a current problem. They asked members to consider the usefulness of the resources from a variety of viewpoints including; potential patients, young people and medical students.
Finally, the community children’s physiotherapy team wanted the group’s input on developing their new website. The young people suggested it should include information about what to expect from an appointment, as they were interested in the diversity of help the team offered. They also felt displaying the information in a bullet-point format and including lots of photos and videos would improve the accessibility of the content. Not only this, but the researchers explained that they encourage patients to self-manage their exercises, as this helps prepare them for the transition into adult services. Therefore, having ‘how-to’ videos about different exercises would refresh patient’s memory in between appointments and enable them to continue to make progress themselves.
Hi guys, My name is Alexis and I`m 9 years old. Hope you’re well! I`m part of a group called Young Person’s Advisory Group at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. Yes, I know that the name is quite a mouthful, but that`s why we have a shortened version: YPAG. In YPAG we get to do a […]
Esme, Nicke and Freya explore research at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (GOSH).
These scenarios have been developed and tested by Generation R YPAGs.
