Sharing patient stories openly

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the new story slideshow feature on Care Opinion. It's designed to make it easy to share any set of stories on a big screen - for example, in a waiting room or a staff meeting area.

And it didn't take long to spot the first recorded use of the slideshow "in the wild" - in this case, in public waiting areas at The Lawson Practice in Hackney, East London:

Toyin, the Clinical Data and IT Lead for the practice, told us:

"Publishing the slideshow was actually quite easy once I realised that I could link to it as a simple HTML page. At our practice we use software called Envisage to upload content to our reception TVs so I simply copied and pasted the link and identified it as an HTML page and then entered the amount of seconds I wanted the page to appear for and voilà, it worked!"

Why does this matter?

In all cultures, including healthcare cultures, some experiences are widely shared and discussed, and others less so. And often, the voices of patients, service users and carers seem to be missing from healthcare decision making.

If we want healthcare cultures in which the experiences of people who use services matter, and lead to learning and change, then we must ensure those experiences are seen and heard within our healthcare settings. Our slideshow is one small way to help make patient experiences visible to everyone who spends time in healthcare settings.

Can we go further?

Yes, we can! Many years ago - probably around 2008 or 2009 - Ivo Gormley, the founder of GoodGym, used screenshots from Patient Opinion (as we then were) to help us imagine new ways in which people's care experiences might be made visible.

Two images of Ivo's imagined future are below - and of course, with our slideshow this is now simple to implement. What do you think?

Although the images above imagine how things might be, the image below is real: a quote taken from a Care Opinion story and painted on the wall in the HQ of Notts Healthcare.

If your organisation aspires to be "patient-centred", then why not demonstrate that clearly to both patients and staff by making sure that (among other things) patient and carer voices are literally visible in your organisation?