Do you ever stop and wonder how social prescribing actually makes a difference to people's lives? Well, educators are currently doing just that by challenging the existing 'pathogenic' models that are traditionally taught to health care students in universities. Over the past few decades, health care curriculums have focused on teaching students how to assess, plan, and implement care that 'fixes' people. In doing so, we sometimes see the 'patient' rather than the 'person' in front of us. As Lord Crisp notes – 'we need to remove our NHS specs' if we are to truly understand the person. It is only when we shed our pathogenic model mindset that we can really understand how we can support communities through health creation, and strengths-based approaches. It is believed that these asset-based approaches typically empower communities and individuals as opposed to a deficit-based approach that may disempower people. There is a growing interest in how nursing, allied health professional and medical education can encourage our students to access socially prescribed services so that they can learn how asset-based community approaches consider the person 'behind the patient.' Moreover, research has highlighted that health care students working in the private, voluntary, or independent sector (PIVO) sector can provide additional value, insight and support to both beneficiaries and services that are making a real difference to people's lives.

Inspired through the Social Prescribing Network Special Interest Group, we created a group called 'PerCIE' which includes educationalists from for Nursing, Midwifery, Allied Health Professionals (AHP's) and medicine and representatives from Health Education England Northwest, the Personalised Care Institute. Since March 2020, we have met regularly to discuss the ways in which students can learn from and with colleagues in the PIVO sector about personalised approaches to wellbeing. This work has focused on developing models that will enable students to work within social prescribing schemes and with Social Prescribing Link Workers to learn about 'what matters to someone' rather than focusing on 'what's the matter with someone'.

Through collaborative working, the PerCIE group co-created a 'Social Prescribing Placement Curriculum Document and Guiding Principles for Undergraduate/Postgraduate Health and Social Care Students' that can be used by educationalists to help students learn about social prescribing and the asset-based approaches that are used. The framework describes a range of educational pathways and approaches that could be used to support a professional socio-culture shift from a medically dominated disease-based curriculum to a values-based person-centred model of care. We hope that the PerCIE framework will also encourage health and social care students to feel they can make a difference to the health of their communities, through focusing on what matters to the wellbeing of citizens and communities.

So, are you still wondering how Social Prescribing makes a difference? Want to know more? Please contact Dr Michelle Howarth for more information about the PerCIE group and how we are working to shape education for the benefit of all.

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