Bimpe Kuti-Matekenya

The Patient as Coach Team (PaCT) initiative represents a transformative step forward in nurse education. Led by service users and carers, PaCT reimagines how student nurses learn about, connect with, and practise personcentred, compassionate care. By placing lived experience at the heart of its design, the initiative offers a powerful model of learning that supports the development of emotional intelligence, ethical awareness, and the values that underpin professional nursing practice. In an era where healthcare systems are under increasing pressure to maintain dignity, empathy, and humanity in care delivery, PaCT stands out as a pioneering and innovative educational response. It is firmly rooted in the 6Cs of Nursing— 1. Compassion and Empathy 2. Dignity and Confidentiality 3. Trust and Honesty 4. Collaboration and Communication 5. Courage and Commitment 6. Competence and Expressing Emotion It offers students an opportunity to engage in coproduced education shaped by people with direct experience of care. Rather than being passive recipients of care, service users and carers become educators in their own right, and are influencing the next generation of practitioners. The PaCT initiative offers a bold and sustainable way to bridge the gap between theory and real-world practice. It humanises the learning experience, embeds lived experience as a vital source of knowledge, and helps to shape a workforce that is not only clinically competent but also grounded in empathy, dignity, and ethical care. Recognising the value of PaCT is a recognition of what the future of nurse education must look like: one where compassion is not only taught, but genuinely understood, deeply felt, and consistently practised.

Background
Service user involvement in educating healthcare professionals in higher education can help student nurses develop a compassionate approach to care practice. This article explains one university’s initiative, the Patient as Coach Team (PaCT), and presents evaluation results from phase 1. The PaCT strategy involved a service user-led session with student nurses, in small groups, sharing experiences of care from a service user perspective.
Aim Our aim was to evaluate nursing students’ views of the PaCT session, involving service users in their teaching and learning.
Design Survey.
Method Structured questionnaires with a free-text box were completed by student nurses (n = 321). Structured question responses were analysed manually and free-text data thematically. Data collection took place from June 2016 to June 2017.
Results There were very positive responses to the survey questions, with students perceiving a positive impact on their learning. Five themes emerged from the students’ free-text responses: ‘Usefulness of the session’, ‘Seeing patients’ perspectives’, ‘Inspiring and motivating session’, ‘Good discussions with patient coach’ and ‘Overall views about the PaCT session’.
Conclusion The PaCT session provides a valid learning strategy, utilising coaching as a technique to enable student nurses to learn from service users’ experiences and perspectives of care. In addition, it contributes to students’ reflective practice about their individual professional practice in care settings