Stepping down and looking back

You might have heard we’re making some changes at Care Opinion.

Today is my last day as chief executive after over 11 years in the role. Tomorrow Fraser Gilmore, currently our director for Care Opinion in Scotland, takes over the helm and I’ll be moving into a different role, as director of research and development.

Leading the team at Care Opinion has been the experience of my life. I didn’t know if I would be any good at leading an organisation, but it turned out I could do it, after a bit of practice. It’s been busy, challenging, sometimes exhausting, but always stimulating, creative and extremely rewarding.

When we started Patient Opinion, as we were called back in 2005, we thought it would be worthwhile to share, openly and online, real experiences of care in near real-time, so that everyone could read and learn from them. We believed and hoped, perhaps naively, that doing this would enable anyone who wanted to, to help make care better.

And what has been wonderful, as we have developed and learned over the last 20 years, is that this has turned out to be true. We know this both from our experience of working with hundreds of services across the UK, and from the ever-growing body of rigorous academic research evidence on Care Opinion and the difference patient feedback can make.

We know, for example, that sharing patient narratives can improve patient experience measures, lift staff morale and build confidence. We’ve seen open online feedback give people hope, lead to changes in services, build trust, and change the culture of teams and organisations.

We also know that online patient feedback can predict CQC scores, identify unsafe hospitals (better than staff can) and perhaps even reduce staff sickness and burnout.

Gratitude is a big part of life at Care Opinion

In the past decade we have learned almost daily about why safe and simple patient feedback matters, and how to do it better. And of course, there is still plenty more to learn and to do, to grow our service so that it becomes more effective, helpful and sustainable. I’m excited that I am able to continue at Care Opinion, in a new role with a focus on building our platform, stimulating new research and fostering the use of Care Opinion in health professional education and training.

Gratitude is a big part of life at Care Opinion. It flows through the stories people share every day. I too am immensely grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to be part of Care Opinion’s story. I have been lucky to be able to work with many passionate, value-led, wise and talented people here, and I thank them all for allowing me to lead them. And I’m grateful to my old friend and our founder, Paul Hodgkin, for starting us off on this whole adventure.

I’m grateful for the people who trust us enough to share their stories with us, and for the healthcare staff who hear them, share them and act on them to make care better for everyone.

Finally, I’m grateful to all those many hundreds of people who have, over the years, encouraged us in so many ways to keep going, to do better, to make a difference. That encouragement has kept me going, and still does.