The curriculum review carousel and patient-community partnerships in health professional education

This Letter to the Editor reflects on insights from the 3rd International Patient’s Voice conference, highlighting that despite two decades of advocacy, lived-experience and patient-community partnerships remain precarious within health professional education (HPE). We argue that recurring curriculum review cycles - intended to enhance educational quality - can inadvertently undermine these partnerships. Using the metaphor of the curriculum review carousel, we illustrate how the same forces driving reform can also render patient-community partnerships vulnerable to removal. We briefly propose strategies to embed patient and community involvement as core curriculum principles.