ScotGEM Student placements at Care Opinion 2023

For the third year in a row, Care Opinion were delighted to host 2 students placements from St Andrews University’s ScotGEM course. Our students, Iona Gibson and David Scott were tasked with doing some research using Care Opinion stories, on a topic of their choosing, based on their personal and professional interests. 

Iona, who worked with us for the second year running, decided to take a wider look into disability awareness in the NHS, while David's interest was looking at ear, nose and throat service feedback and how this links in with Realistic Medicine principles.

Both students presented their findings at an online session which was held on the 1st February, 2023, a recording of which can be viewed below:

Both Iona and David wrote papers on the research they had completed in their areas of interest.

Iona Gibson

Iona’s paper, titled “Disability in the NHS”  is introduced as follows:

"As a carer, I have watched people who have disabilities face many challenges when it comes to their health but unfortunately one of those challenges was the care provided by the NHS. Over time changes have been made in some places to make services more accessible but there is still a long way to go. Personally, I find it hard to believe more change has not happened to aid people with disabilities as they make up almost half of the Scottish population when you include long term conditions. This can be seen in a statement on NHS Ayrshire and Arran website:

“Long term conditions are health conditions that last a year or longer, impact on a person's life, and may require ongoing care and support.

The definition does not relate to any one condition, care-group or age category. Around two million people, 40 per cent of the Scottish population, have at least one long term condition and one in four adults over 16 reports some form of long term illness, health problem or disability.” 

This highlights that changes are crucial to make healthcare accessible to the entire population, not just 60%."

You can read Iona's paper at this link: https://www.careopinion.org.uk/resources/IG Paper Aug 23 PDF.pdf

David Scott

David's paper, titled “How patient feedback can improve Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) services” is introduced as follows:

"During my placement at Care Opinion, I undertook a project to evaluate how the aims of the Realistic Medicine national strategy are being implemented in Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) services in NHS Fife. This project was informed by a previous survey of NHS Fife service users, carried out in 2019, which set out to understand which questions mattered to ENT service users in relation to Realistic Medicine principles. For my project, I chose to focus on two of the six pillars of Realistic Medicine: shared decision making and personalised approaches to care. I conducted a search of patient narratives via the Care Opinion website, using the search terms ‘NHS Fife’ and ‘ENT’, including search results posted from 1/1/2020 to 31/12/2022. Through close analysis of the 48 stories, I identified scenarios where the principles of Realistic Medicine had been implemented either successfully or unsuccessfully from the feedback provider’s perspective."

You can read David's paper at this link: https://www.careopinion.org.uk/resources/service-learning-placement-summary.pdf and you can see the poster he created as well.

Previous ScotGEM Projects

We were so pleased to be working with ScotGEM students again this year, and we wanted to share the previous work created over the last couple of years. There have been some very interesting and inspiring topics.

You can see a blog about the project work completed in 2021, by students, Dan Newton and Andrew Blain here: Communication & Covid 19 - a presentation and paper from students of St. Andrew's University's… (careopinion.org.uk)

You can see a blog about Iona Gibson's previous project focussed on Autism, and fellow student, Holly Eggleston's work looking at Palliative Care, in 2022 here: ScotGEM Student placements at Care Opinion 2022 | Care Opinion

Thank you to all the ScotGEM students who have taken part in using Care Opinion stories for research so far. We can't wait to see what themes and findings will be explored in the next placement!