Care Opinion: a Catalyst for Connection

In September 2025 the Northern Health and Social Care Trust were delighted to celebrate the 5th Anniversary of Care Opinion in Northern Ireland alongside our colleagues from Care Opinion, the Public Health Agency, other Trusts and invited guests.

In the past 5 years we have been privileged to receive 3090 stories, with 82% positive, complimenting the high standard of treatment and care delivered by our staff.

Specific areas of compliment shared include staff attitude and behaviour, reflecting on staff professionalism, kindness, empathy and compassion. Other areas are information and communication, the high standard of food, and the cleanliness of the trust facilities.

Feedback has boosted staff morale, encouraged staff through challenging times and given staff pride in their work knowing they are delivering a high standard of patient care.

The learning from positive feedback is shared as examples of excellence which all teams endeavour to achieve.

Less positive feedback, although not always pleasant to read, can be considered the cornerstone to improvement. The ‘lived experience’ provides insight we cannot learn from a text book. Marrying the ‘lived experience and the learned experience’ is a powerful combination / collaboration to influence learning, improvement and change that matters to the people that matter. Service Users, families and carers whose experience is less positive often feel a lack of confidence and trust in the service going forward.

Care Opinion can rebuild relationships between service user and service, offering connection, conversation and a joined-up approach to learning from experience.

Lead Nurse for Maternity services Louisa Lapworth shared her experience of the Care Opinion Conversation which she titled ‘Care Opinion a Catalyst to Connection’ at the 5th celebration event:

Louisa’s presentation is a great example of Care Opinion ‘in action’; the importance of feedback, reading the story, listening and learning from it. Louisa was able to reach out, through her response, to the service user to offer the opportunity of a conversation.

This enabled the author to have control, to make a conscious choice whether to make contact or not.

These types of invitation are not always responded to by the author (service user, family or carer) as it can be difficult to revisit a less positive experience and it can be daunting and stressful to meet with Hospital Managers. On this occasion the author chose to make contact, firstly to have a telephone conversation then a face-to-face meeting, a powerful and emotional experience for both parties.

Care Opinion connection allowed the service user to see the ‘Human’ behind the service and the willingness to renew and repair.

If you have had a positive experience or less positive experience in the NHSCT, please let us know through Care Opinion. We will strive to continue to use patient experience stories to build a renewed future for our service through learning from engagement with our service users, families and carers.