Responding to stories on Care Opinion Canada will take practice. Here are some helpful tips from our UK partners.
Empathy and understanding
Showing you care about someone's experience is at the heart of all health and care experiences. The web is an informal place, and your responses can be too. Try using 'I' rather than 'we' and adding the occasional real name makes your responses more human.. Here are some examples from our UK partner where people have just the right tone:
- Response from Fiona McQueen at NHS Ayrshire and Arran
- Response from Louise Ewing at Health & Social care Fife
Apologizing can go a long way
Sometimes, apologizing for a poor experience is just the right thing to do, even if you're not sure "who's to blame":
Explaining what normally happens or why things happen
It might help to explain what normally happens or why things happen in a certain way - to help everyone better understand your organizational processes.
- Response from Louise Ewing at NHS Fife
- Response from Sharon Kidd at United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust
Saying what you will do with the feedback
Whether it's as simple as talking to staff about the feedback, right through to changing the way you do things - this is your chance to let everyone know what you do with feedback.
Saying what you will do to make an improvement
Don't focus on why it happened but more on what you are going to do and how this will help inform service improvements. This is a great opportunity to tell other storytellers and providers what you are doing as a responsive organization.
- Response from Pamela McGoldrick at NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde
- Response from Deborah Colvin at The Lawson Practice explaining the changes they will make
- Response from Christine Somerville at NHS Ayrshire & Arran explaining how feedback has now led to a change
- Response from Rick Edwards at NHS Lanarkshire explaining what will change
Giving a short response followed by a fuller one
It might be hard to post a full response without some time to find out more about the issue. If this is the case, respond what you know and follow-up with another response when you know more.
Giving options for what the author could do next
Sometimes issues can't be resolved online. Your response can guide what they should do next, by suggesting they contact a named person, go back to the service, or contact another service.
- Buckinghamshire Healthcare ask a patient to get in touch
- Nottinghamshire Healthcare Trust signpost author to The Stroke Helpline
Linking to other sites
Don't forget that it's very easy to embed links to other information and resources - for example, check out the examples from our partners in the UK.