In May of this year, my colleague Michaela from Birmingham Children’s Hospital’s Young People’s Advisory Group (YPAG) and I attended the Royal College of Paediatric and Child Health (RCPCH) Conference, which was conveniently held at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham! The Royal College of Paediatric and Child Health has over 19,000 members across the world and aims to ‘transform child health through knowledge, innovation and expertise.’
We were invited as members of YPAG and Thinnk4Brum to promote #TeenTalk, which is a training simulation where role-reversal is used to create and perform scenarios of a situations that occur in a medical setting with young people. It is to encourage healthy discussion about how to communicate effectively with adolescents.
The conference was very exciting, with lots of different stalls promoting different aspects of healthcare and a variety of workshops and seminars. Michaela and I presented two ‘sessions’ of #TeenTalk, where we asked audience volunteers (who were medical professionals) to come up and help perform our scenarios by playing the role of the Young Person, whilst we played the Medical Professional. This role-reversal was very weird at first, but with a little bit of humour and audience participation, the workshops were received extremely well!
At lunchtime we enjoyed networking with professionals from all over the country, as well as grabbing lots of freebies and eating some amazing food!
We were then invited to take part in the Closing Plenary by talking on stage to over 300 medical professionals about the importance of young people’s involvement in improving healthcare services. It was quite daunting as we had microphones and took part in an active discussion, but it was an incredible experience!
Attending the RCPCH Conference as a representative for young people was such an incredible experience. I felt my views and opinions were acknowledged and taken on board, and I met so many wonderful people who were eager to hear what young people have to say. It is so important for young people to not only be involved in clinical services, but also to be given the opportunity to make a real impact on final outcomes and to create a lasting legacy. We are the workforce of the future and it was fantastic to work alongside healthcare professionals as equals.
Sophia Kaur Badhan 
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