The tales of an intern - how i learnt Patient Opinion is more than just surveys

I began at Patient Opinion in February. My first morning was a textbook fail as I battled through the snow, geared with boots and a good number of layers, only to find myself a good mile away from the office – thanks to terrible misguidance from my phone. So, I started my first day an hour late, and more than a little animated.

Despite my tricky start I settled in pretty much straight away and cracked on as my boots began to dry. This isn’t to say that I wasn’t a little sceptical with the whole idea to begin with. Patient feedback on the web – my first thoughts were surveys and does this actually work, do people really comment and share their stories? I soon learnt that they do.

I was quickly shown the ropes and got to know how it works and was relieved to find out I wouldn’t be trawling through survey data. As a trainee journalist (or professional nosey parker as my mum likes to refer to me as), my key interest is in people and particularly in current affairs and our health services. With a fair share of time spent in hospitals growing up with a family with aliments stretching the length of the Magna Carta, it wasn’t hard to develop an interest in them and how they are ran and more importantly to me how they can be improved.

A lot of my internship has been based around the social networking side of the site and how people now communicate. It’s great yet slightly overwhelming how many different ways people can now interact with one another and share their opinions. Twitter, Blogging, Facebook, YouTube – everyone has their own piece of internet real estate and when used well, you can really reap the rewards, as I have seen here at Patient Opinion.

Over the last couple of months I have had the privilege of working with an organisation I have grown a developed interest in and truly admire. I think it is really important to voice our opinions and not only say when something is wrong but when something is done well too. Working here has been great as I’ve been at the heart of it all, hearing the stories come in and reading about the changes health services have made in numerous cases to accommodate their service users.

Aside from adapting to the alien thought of waking up at a time I never knew existed and enduring a 9-5 working day, I have also developed a clearer understanding of how a team works and an organisation develops. What I enjoyed the most was finding out what the public really think of our health services and speaking to them face to face.

I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with students last week and asking them about their experiences of health services. I loved putting the piece together and helping alongside the social media side of the organisation has been great too. I will take away with me from this experience a greater understanding of how to utilise the tools we have, specifically social media, to our advantage. I have also learnt how to adapt to different writing styles for a variety of audiences and across different platforms – something particularly useful with the career I’m heading towards.

I will miss everyone at Patient Opinion, but will keep in touch. I wish everyone all the best in the future and I hope my journey home this afternoon is a little easier than my first journey here…