Community Advisory Committee

Consumers, be they patients, carers or clients, or other health care providers, offer a unique insight into their experiences, expectations and needs.

Melbourne Health’s experience working with the community and consumers in service improvement activities has been rewarding and effective.

The Community Advisory Committee of the Melbourne Health Board was established in 2001 to ensure the community participated in Melbourne Health’s planning, service delivery and policy development.

Community Advisory Committee member Melanie Raymond said: “A large part of our role has been educative. By our very existence, we provide a forum within Melbourne Health that is building awareness of the principles of consumer participation, the value to be gained by embracing consumer views and how such views can be built into service design and improvement.”

One of the key roles of the Community Advisory Committee has been to develop and monitor a Community Participation Plan, which outlines Melbourne Health’s approach to consumer and community involvement across the organisation. The Plan, which is reported annually to DHS, focuses on increasing organisational capacity for consumers, carers and the community to become active partners in decision-making at all levels of Melbourne Health.

As a result, consumers now participate in key committees relating to safety and service improvement, and Melbourne Health services are increasingly initiating consumer-participating activities and requests for consumer representatives.

Consumer participation at Melbourne Health is guided by the DHS Doing it with us not for us Policy (2006) which recognises that community participation in health care services at all levels is valued because it aids in improved outcomes and quality of care for patients, is a democratic right and ensures accountability back to the community.

Lisa's story Lisa Hunt joined the Community Advisory Committee is 2005, motivated by her experience of her husband's care at The Royal Melbourne Hospital. Here is Lisa's story. You don't choose cancer, it chooses you. My husband did not choose at 33 to be diagnosed with Melanoma cancer. It was something he struggled with for seven years, finally losing his battle at the age of 38. We journeyed the last 15 months of this walk with The Royal Melbourne Hospital, bouncing between the Neurology and Oncology units. We were familiar faces in the Emergency Department, where even I was admitted to a cubicle with exhaustion. I negotiated emergency admissions, brain surgery, ICU, distraught family members and stunned children. I chose to join the Melbourne Health Community Advisory Committee to be a representative of others who face similar or worse predicaments. I hope to be able to place tools, education and resources into the hands of those who may be grieving and confused. If I can help just one family navigate the new world they find themselves in, and improve their journey at the RMH, I will have achieved my desire. Defining moments are most often filled with pain. I choose to draw from this most defining moment in my life, and use it to bring help to someone else in some small way.