Care Opinion's Autumn Conference 2023 - Caring For Care

On this 16th November 2023, we held our autumn conference called “Caring for care – How online feedback is helping healthcare get better”.

We were delighted to welcome guest speakers and attendees from around the UK who were interested in the power of online public feedback to positively impact health and care services. This half day event was split in to 3 sessions, and we are pleased to share the recordings, presentations and research mentioned in each session here.

Part 1:

In the first part of our conference, our very own Emma Noonan provided a welcome and outlined our programme for the day.

This was followed by our opening session, where Care Opinion CEO James Munro spoke with Dr Fadhila Mazanderani about her paper “Caring for Care”, which was the inspiration for the theme for the conference.

Tracy Molloy then welcomed our guest speakers who provided presentations on “Hearing all voices – reaching people who have been historically unheard”. This was followed by an engaging Q&A session from Tim Hunt.

Our speakers for this session included:

• Victoria Sullivan, Project Manager and Care Opinion Manager, NHS Tayside
• Linda Craig, Public Health Agency in Northern Ireland
• Lydia Broom, Service User Involvement Lead, Change Grow Live Birmingham  
• Paul Pescud, Service Manager, Change Grow Live Cambridgeshire

Part 2:

In the second part of our conference, James Munro held one of our regular research chats (this one is research chat number 22), where he spoke with Dr Lauren Ramsey from the University of Leeds about “How is online feedback seen and used in three hospital Trusts in England? Lessons for policy and practice.”

Part 3:

In the final part of the conference, we started with a much anticipated session hosted by Sarah Ashurst called “How to respond to Critical Feedback”. In this session, Sarah shared a presentation that looked at how critical feedback gives services the opportunity to show they are open to, and acting on feedback, while exploring how is feels to receive these comments, how services should approach these difficult comments and provided guidance on what makes a good response.

Sarah was then hosted a panel discussion where she was joined by:

• Elizabeth Whyte, Lead Nurse, Public Health Nursing, Women, Childrens and Families, Northern Health and Social Care Trust and;
• Shona Lawrence, patient experience manager from NHS 24.

As regular responders on Care Opinion with a lot of practice, they were able to share their wealth of experience in responding to difficult stories.

To round off our Conference, Care Opinion were delighted to host our very first Star Responder Awards Ceremony, hosted by Lisa Dendy, Sarah Ashurst and Tracy Malloy. Responding well on Care Opinion is so important, and we wanted to celebrate 9 responders from across the UK, whose amazing responses exemplified the very best in practice. Our winners included:

• Diane Boyle, Social Worker, NHSCT
• Blaithnid Hughes, General manager surgery, NHSCT
• Naoimh McGlone, Service Improvement lead for Dementia, SHSCT
• Abbie Barkham, Urgent Community response team, Southern Health
• Andew Garrett, Sexual Health South Staffs, Inclusion
• Lydia Broom, CGL Birmingham
• Lee-Anne Abel, NHS Tayside
• Theresa Keicher, Team Lead, Fife Specialist Palliative Care Outreach Team, NHS Fife
• Louise Lawrie, Service Manager - Motherwell Locality, North Lanarkshire HSCP

The event was rounded off by a kind, thankful and encouraging word from our Head of Care Opinion Scotland, Fraser Gilmore.

We were delighted that our guest speakers shared their presentations and research discussed, which you can find below:

Presentations

• Fadhila Mazanderani Caring for Care.pptx
• Victoria Sullivan Seldom Heard Voices .pptx 
• Linda Craig The Golden Thread Presentation.pptx
• Lydia Broom CGL Birmingham Presentation.pptx
• Paul Pescud GCLCambridgeshire Presentation.pptx

Research

• Caring for care: Online feedback in the context of public healthcare services (Mazanderani et al, 2021)
• “Feedback is indeed a dainty dish to set before the Trust”: Comparing how online patient feedback is responded to and used across three hospital Trusts in England (Ramsey et al, 2023)