The Teen Advisory Council

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Every month I am a part of the Teen Advisory Council, a group made up of unique members. The group consists of teenage patients that have long lasting relationships with the University of Michigan Mott Children’s Hospital. What is so intriguing about this particular group of people is that this council would be nonexistent; if the advanced medical technology had not been around when we were all born. I have been involved with this council for about a year now and I did not know it even existed until I became a member. The Teen Advisory Council is a newly acquired committee that the University of Michigan doctors and nurses have been involved with for almost a year. The coordinator of this council is the Patient and Family Centered Care Program …show more content…

The goal of this webpage is to get the word out that there is such a thing as a Teen Advisory Council (TAC) and to attract teens to become a member. To become a constituent of this group; however, there are specific requisites that Kelly Parent has set up. Members of this committee have to be roughly the ages of 12 – 21 years, a recurrent patient of the University of Michigan Motts Children’s Hospital with a life-long medical condition. The current guidelines to become a member, contradict my interviewee’s perspective. She thought that members of the council have to possess a medical heart condition. The group requirement expands to welcome any patients with a variety of medical …show more content…

Each individual takes on a specific role within the group and is important to this committee. The director of this council is in charge of what day we meet each month, the activities we do, and the food we eat and contacting new presenters for each meeting. These presenters are from different departments of the Hospital to come and fill us in with new projects that would perform better with a teenager’s perspective. The teen members take their experiences they have had at the hospital and give their views on what the hospital should do to make it an even better place for teen patients. The medical student is in part an assistant to both the director and the teenagers. She makes sure that everyone signs in, arranges the food on the table and takes over if the director is unable to attend a meeting. The medical student also provides their input with the unique perspective of learning medicine at the University and volunteering in the different departments at the hospital. The interviewee stated that the roles the members play in the committee are to help patients at Mott Children’s Hospital. She is essentially correct, as a team our most vital goal is to make the hospital more teen friendly. In order to meet this goal, there are different activities we participate in and presenters we give our attention to in order to give our input as a

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