What is Care Opinion?
Care Opinion is an online public feedback platform with over 450,000 stories of care about local health/care services so far. 100,000 people visit Care Opinion each week.
Who runs it?
The platform is run by Care Opinion CIC, an award-winning non-profit organisation.
How can it be safe?
Every story is moderated by Care Opinion before publication to avoid identifying patients. If a story criticises a member of staff, Care Opinion ensures they are not identifiable. This keeps the system safe for everyone.
If a story raises whistleblowing, safeguarding or legal issues, Care Opinion will direct the author to the correct formal channel.
How does it help patients and families?
People often want to give thanks to staff or raise concerns about care. They need a safe, simple and modern way to do this. At Care Opinion anyone can post a story, see if their story is read, receive a response and sometimes see their story make a difference.
After using Care Opinion one patient wrote: “I felt empowered and understood and believed and respected.”
How does it help staff?
You can read stories about services near you, whether you work in them or use them. You can see how these services feel for other people, what they do well, and where the improvement opportunities are.
Clinical teams are often surprised how much positive feedback they receive, and how this lifts morale. One clinician wrote: “When teams take ownership of feedback they are more likely to want to replicate the good and prevent the bad. Frontline staff hold the answers.”
How does it help me as a student?
You can use the stories and responses on the site when studying patient experience, quality improvement, shared decision making, inter-professional learning, leadership and related topics.
You might want to read stories on Care Opinion before coming on clinical placement. Some students read stories – and especially responses – when thinking about where they might work in future.
You might also want to share Care Opinion with patients and help them tell their own stories too.
If your educational institution has a subscription and you log into Care Opinion using your student email, you can log all the stories you read automatically. You can also use a range of online tools (like searching, reporting, data visualisations) which will help you use the stories in your studies.