BAOMS President Daljit Kaur Dhariwal discusses patient-centric care
02 July 2024 (Last updated: 3 Jul 2024 11:54)
With the BAOMS Annual Scientific Meeting getting underway tomorrow (3 July 2024) we recently spoke with President Daljit Kaur Dhariwal about patient-centric care, the thread that weaves through this year’s programme.
The 2024 BAOMS meeting will open with a President’s Lecture given by Dr Liz O’Riordan, a former surgeon who has spoken openly about her experiences as a breast cancer patient. The event will close with a panel presenting the progress with six presidential initiatives: projects that were awarded funding one year ago, each with a focus on patient impact.
BAOMS 62nd President, Daljit Kaur Dhariwal says:
“I wanted this year’s focus to be on patients, because they’re the reason we are all here. The conference retains its academic focus, but as we share good practice and lessons learned when things don’t go as well as they could, I wanted to create a space to truly consider patients at the heart of everything we do. Are we delivering what patients expect and working in partnership with patients to empower them to make decisions that are right for them.
“We’ve tried to organise the keynotes to concentrate on different areas that are important in patient care. Some are more obviously aligned with the theme, for example values based care and patient safety, or the preparation of patients for better outcomes and shorter hospital stays. Others are about learning from others and sharing good practice, as in teams where we recognise the elements that make a team work well and aim to replicate them to achieve positive outcomes for patients. Even the session on gunshots is there because although we don't see these commonly in the UK there are lessons we can learn from the States.”
Throughout the conference, patients will sit on discussion panels and there are sessions focused on truly listening and changing practice as a result of patient feedback. It may be new for many speakers to have a patient discussant on a panel, but Dhariwal hopes this frames conversations around delivering the very best patient-centred care.
She explains: “Like lots of conferences, we’ve tried to make our panels as diverse as possible, but with the patient voice in mind, we have asked each panel to include patient representation. We haven’t just included professional patients, who are professionals who also happen to be patients, but patients with no formal training in the field. This is fairly unique and I look forward to seeing how this shapes discussions.”
Alongside the conference are three allied professional training days for valued members of maxillofacial teams. Wednesday is for associate fellows and staff associate specialists, Thursday for maxillofacial prosthetists who work in labs and support the planning side of surgery and Friday is for nurses. Each day's attendance contributes to CPD hours and on site attendees will be given a certificate of attendance after the meeting.
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