Preparing Young People to Help Improve Health Services
Young people are partners in improving care. Their perspectives can help healthcare providers make services more welcoming, respectful and responsive.
In October this year, the Reproductive Education and Adolescent Community Health (REACH) Project held Youth Preceptorship Preparation Training Workshops to prepare young people to serve as youth patient-trainers. In this role, they will help healthcare providers strengthen the skills needed to deliver sexual and reproductive health services to adolescents and young people.
The workshops took place in the Project’s Member States – Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The initiative gives young people a practical role in shaping services that listen to them, respect them and support informed decisions.
The REACH Project is funded by Global Affairs Canada and implemented by Alinea International in collaboration with the Caribbean Technical Assistance and Education Center for Health (C-TECH), and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS).
Led by the C-TECH, the sessions used fictional role plays. Participants acted as young clients seeking sexual and reproductive health services, then gave constructive feedback on their experience of care.
By the end of the training, participants are expected to understand their role and responsibilities as youth patient-trainers, including professional boundaries and teamwork; and recognise the features of youth-friendly, inclusive and rights-based sexual and reproductive health services.
Additionally, they should be able to observe provider behaviours related to respect, trust, confidentiality, inclusion, communication and agreed next steps; and apply confidentiality, safeguarding and emotional-safety procedures, including recognising distress and knowing when to pause, seek support or withdraw. These observations will provide constructive, behaviour-specific feedback to healthcare providers to strengthen their skills and improve the quality of youth-friendly SRH care.
The initiative also supports adolescent pregnancy prevention by helping providers improve how they communicate with and care for adolescents. It emphasises respectful, non-judgemental care, privacy, informed choice, and clear explanations of confidentiality and its limits.
