What Do Patient Panels Do?

An IBD Patient Panel is a group of patients who have Crohn’s disease/Ulcerative Colitis and who use the same IBD service at their local Hospital.

They believe that they can help improve the local service by meeting with the staff who provide it by:

• sharing their thoughts, experiences and aspirations on service improvement
• acting as a sounding board for proposed service re-design and changes
• raising the profile of IBD Services through events like IBD Departmental Open Days
• influencing decisions around the improvement of the provision of their IBD service

They are different from most Patient Panels because they are both disease (Crohn's and Colitis) and service/hospital specific. This means they can speak with the authority of personal experience about a service with which they are intimately acquainted, and, because they suffer from an illness which is a Long Term Condition many of them have become experts (in their own condition) by experience. They are committed to the ethos of partnership working through the co-design of services.

There are about 40 such IBD Patient Panels at hospitals around the UK and are supported by Crohn's and Colitis UK. They usually meet about four times a year, sometimes more if they are working on a particular project

Their overall aim is to improve the NHS experience of the IBD Patient at their local hospital.

To find out more about Patient Panels and the work they carry out click here.