Care Opinion for Education Professionals

Update from Care Opinion Scotland

Posted by Ben Simmons, Development and Engagement Officer, Care Opinion Scotland, on 18 Sep 2017

On the 14th September 2017 we hosted our first event in Scotland for Education Professionals.
Gina opened our session with an Introduction to Care Opinion, making excellent use of insightful quotes from the great and the good whilst covering our mission, vision and values.
Next up was James, talking about how Care Opinion stories are a great example of People helping health and care get better. As well as explaining how Care Opinion works to connect feedback from patients with staff, it is always a pleasure to share testimony from staff on how Care Opinion affects the way they work.
Dorothy Armstrong, Professional Clinical Advisor to SPSO, was our last speaker before the break with a powerful presentation on the role of Care Opinion stories when developing compassion and empathy, featuring this wonderful video:

After we had refreshed and recovered from the initial sessions it was over to Pam Nelmes, a Senior Lecturer at Plymouth University, to talk about the way that Care Opinion has been woven into nursing education, before Leanne Patrick, a student mental health nurse, told us how she uses Care Opinion stories in her own studies at Stirling University.
To close out the day we had a very productive discussion on the opportunities and challenges facing education professionals looking to incorporate Care Opinion into their way of working, which are summarised here:
Opportunities
Integration of Care Opinion into teaching modules
Use of stories in re-validation process
Gathering a group of stories around a topic
Feeding positive stories back to staff
Using stories during induction for new NHS staff
Using stories in NES programmes
Using real stories in focus groups
Creating resources for conferences
Distance learning for inter-professional learning
Use in training on breaking bad news

Challenges
Convincing colleagues of the value of a single story
Changing the culture around stories as feedback
Supporting staff and students to use Care Opinion
Overcoming defensiveness of staff to critical feedback

After an intense afternoon it was nice to finish on such a passionate session, and we're looking forward to taking the next step and integrating Care Opinion stories into health and social care education across Scotland.