Public Partner and Patient Advocate

Formerly a specialist teacher of vulnerable pupils, Jean developed a second career as a patient advocate when she experienced irreversible sudden hearing loss. With huge gaps in her care because of lack of medical knowledge of her condition, she started working on behalf of herself and other patients to make things better, gradually expanding her work to include research to do with tinnitus, hearing loss and dementia, inducements to wearing hearing aids, and even some patient involvement in clinical trials to do with the treatment of sudden hearing loss.

She has sat on steering groups for the James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnerships and writes a column for the magazine of the RNID (Royal National Institute for the Deaf). As a 2016 Northwest London NIHR CLAHRC Fellow (Collaborated Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care), she developed a project looking at hearing loss in care homes.

Jean comes to this conference with the intention of helping attendees understand the benefits to their practice by involving people like her in their work and care.