Why not consider engaging Emma to work with your students, new graduates or team members? Not only are you providing them with professional development and ongoing support, but you are also enhancing their critical thinking and clinical skills by fostering reflective practice. What’s more, you are ensuring that one’s lived experience is included in their care and delivery.

Emma readily runs tutorials where she encourages the group to discuss their clinical rationale behind their approaches, and brainstorms with them alternate person-centred strategies.

“We had you offering weekly mentoring for students, which students said was really helpful. For example, one student said from listening to your perspective they now know more about the client’s perspective. Another said you were so understanding and were such a great asset to their supervision as you really explained your perception of things, which made the process easier to understand from a lived experience … incredible.”

Past mentoring experience:

• Monash University: Placement Mentor Series for Occupational Therapy & Physiotherapy 4th Year Students
• Monash University Occupational Therapy Tutorials Communication for Healthcare practice
• Latrobe University Occupational Therapy – Intentional Interviewing Skills Tutorials
• Swinburne University: Master of Occupational Therapy Students: Person-centred Care & Empathy
• Charles Sturt University Physiotherapy Lecture, Port Macquarie

“The students found real benefit in your input in this area, given your dual expertise of clinical and lived experience. For example, one said it was good they could ask you a clinical question, and you could answer it with your clinical knowledge but then also from the perspective of you receiving the services, how you were approached, and how would that make you feel.”

Do you need someone outside your organisation to workshop specific issues/areas within your workplace? Emma runs inspiring, motivating interactive workshops that are a great opportunity for you, your team members, students and your clients to reflect and apply Emma’s key messages to your/their personal and professional lives.

Emma: “Ensuring the person is valued and respected is vital too. If this rapport is not established and maintained there is limited time spent on building and nurturing this relationship. The relationship risks remaining merely transactional, or even adversarial. I strongly believe the relationship and the outcomes achieved will suffer. If a person does not feel heard or valued, they are not likely to want to disclose information, or expend energy disclosing details, or be receptive to the student or clinician’s input.”

Past workshops:

• Monash Health Orientation Seminars: Allied Health New Graduates
• St Vincent’s Hospital Allied Health Inservice: Person-centred care: are they your goals or your clients goals? Are they meaningful?
• South Eastern Sydney Local Health District (SESLHD) Occupational Therapy: Team Building, Holistic Care, Developing Rapport
• The University of Newcastle: Empowerment, Counselling, Attending Skills through Strong Communication
• NDIS Innovative Workforce Fund Project
• Stroke Foundation: Young Stroke Project Workshops– Information Provision in Service Delivery

“Really putting yourself in someone else’s shoes” is the conceptual starting point to Emma’s consulting practice. Her proficiency and first-hand knowledge as a result of her lived experience means she can share unmatched lived experience, user testing, and empathy mapping because she can simultaneously see it from the support person’s perspective as well as her own lived viewpoint. Emma can employ her expertise to problem-solve particularly complicated scenarios and cases.

Are your new projects, programs and resources co-designed? Do they include the input of someone with lived experience? Emma believes there is always room for improvement. She works closely with organisations to improve their resilience and person-centred care. Emma also consults on specific project work and fundraisers.

The movement to telehealth as a permanent change is another way she is on the cutting edge of putting into practice effective person-centred care. Emma is uniquely qualified to prioritise the inclusion of lived experience.

Emma: “How you transition to telehealth is so important, for both the person and the supporters – acknowledging the challenges, giving time to address them so the supporters are more present for the person, as well as encouraging them to discover the positive aspects of this form of interaction, and what they can do to facilitate person-centred care. Brainstorming, anticipating and pre-empting obstacles to be able to engage in meaningful interactions is essential.”

“Adapting to telehealth supervision sessions with Emma Gee every week helped to guide us, and how to fix up technical things.”

Past consulting work:

• NOVELL Redesign Project: Redesign of Rehabilitation Facilities
• WorkSafe Project Consultancy – Social changes & Models of Healthcare
• Jetstar Consultancy- Accessible Travel
• University of Melbourne Workshop: Designing a telehealth physical stroke rehabilitation program
• Swinburne University Co-Design Workshop, Improving custom walker design and manufacture techniques,
• Neurosciences Research Stakeholder Advisory Meeting