“Even if only one student is listening, it’s a success”: P.A.R.T.Y. returns to The Alfred

The Prevent Alcohol and Risk‐Related Trauma in Youth (P.A.R.T.Y.) program confronts teenagers with true stories and experiences of their peers to offer what Emergency Department nurse Andrew Laird describes as an invaluable way of helping educate young people about the realities of risk-related trauma.

“The program exposes adolescents and young adults to the horrific realities of trauma that can often be a consequence of poor or influenced decision making,” Andrew said. “The goal of P.A.R.T.Y. is to teach young people the hard hitting and shocking facts of the patient journey from moment of injury to rehab at home many months later.”

Manager of The Alfred’s trauma service, Kim Williams, shares a similar perspective of the program.

“It is a raw and emotional journey into how traumatic injury, as a consequence of risk-taking behaviour, can forever change young lives and the lives of those that love them,” Kim said. “We hope that after participating in this program that young people will stop and think about what could happen and how devastating the effects can be to them and everyone involved.”

Having expanded to over 100 countries since its inception at a Toronto, Canada hospital in 1986, the P.A.R.T.Y. program first launched at The Alfred in 2009 and has since evolved in no small part thanks to the influence of its coordinator’s passion and decades of practical experience within the hospital.

A nurse at The Alfred since 1992, P.A.R.T.Y. Program Coordinator Sue Smith recognises her years of experience in the hospital’s Emergency and Trauma Centre – the busiest in Australia – as an asset to informing the P.A.R.T.Y. program’s development and communicating its importance to its participants.

“I literally feel like, to be a good P.A.R.T.Y. coordinator, you really need to be a clinical nurse as well,” Sue said. “Obviously, that doesn’t happen in a lot of places, but I feel like the credibility that I have from still working on the floor in emergency, still being involved in patient contact and having real stories to tell the students when they come in is so valuable.

“I feel like when I talk to the students and say that I am still a nurse working in the Emergency and Trauma Centre, I already have an extra bit of attention.”

Initially drawn to pursue a career in nursing thanks to the excitement and appeal of stories of life in a nurse’s dormitory from her older sister, a fellow nurse, Sue quickly found herself feeling at home within the hospital corridors.

“I moved into those nursing dorms and went to school for 10 weeks, here at The Alfred,” Sue recalled. “And then we were let loose on the wards, and I just felt straight away that this was obviously the right career choice.

“And I have loved every day.”

Even more than her three decades of practical experience, it is this love for her job and the empathy which radiates from Smith. Both serve to help The Alfred’s P.A.R.T.Y. program particularly stand out.

Smith’s eyes well with tears even just to recall her many years working in The Alfred’s trauma centre.

“I am a really emotional person,” Sue concedes. “But I feel like that definitely works to my advantage in ED because I really have a lot of feelings still, which I guess is not always normal when you’ve been doing a job for this long.”

Applying this empathy and sense of emotion to her role as P.A.R.T.Y. Program Coordinator, Sue said she is clear about communicating to program participants that she understands the likelihood that they will take risks and that, to some extent, this is a part of the process of these participants as they grow.

In this manner, Sue distinguishes The Alfred’s delivery of the program from scare tactics, instead viewing the program more as a means of assisting young people to better understand the potential consequences of any risk-taking behaviours they might consider.

“You know, we know that some of them are going to go out and take or try drugs, or drink alcohol, and when I say this to them they often can’t believe that we’re saying that,” Sue explained. “We, of course, reinforce that while we don’t advocate them doing it, more than anything we just want to make them aware that, if they do those activities, that they can make choices which will end in disaster.

“And I feel like when we take that approach and that way of talking to them, they feel like they can relax a little bit and then potentially listen a little bit more."

“Then, they’re not just thinking, ‘oh, here we go, it’s another person telling us don’t do this, don’t do that’.”

This approach of engaging with young people rather than simply talking at them has an obvious impact on how Sue and The Alfred present the P.A.R.T.Y. program – as participants are invited to not only listen and learn, but to engage in hands-on activities, see parts of the hospital for themselves and even speak to current and former patients as a way to better understand the potential impacts of unnecessary or reckless risk-taking.

Having been forced to adapt to an online model during the Covid pandemic, Smith is particularly excited to see the program’s return to the hospital corridors, barely able to wipe the smile from her face as she watches it unfold.

“We know that you’re probably never going to get through to everybody,” Sue said. “But, even if it stops one person from getting into a high-risk activity that’s going to end up in disaster, then the program is a success.”

“So I think that’s what keeps me going, and what keeps the program going as well.”

P.A.R.T.Y. will return on Thursday, 16 November 2023 with a program open to 17 to 25-year-olds. To enquire about attendance, contact info@partyalfred.org.au or visit partyalfred.org