Online Patient Feedback: Diagnosing the Sickness within the NHS or Caring for Care?
On 11 May, we welcome Fadhila Mazanderani and Cath Montgomery (University of Edinburgh) to SKAPE as part of our seminar series.
People increasingly provide feedback about healthcare services online. These practices have been lauded for enhancing patient power, choice and control, encouraging greater transparency and accountability, and contributing to healthcare service improvement. In this seminar, we present findings from two independently-conducted studies: one exploring service users’ motivations and experiences of providing online feedback and one examining healthcare providers’ experiences of engaging with online reviews. While service users invariably orientated their feedback toward improving and, in some cases, transforming care, providers voiced resistance to narratives of choice and quality benchmarking, seen as symptomatic of the marketization of healthcare. Within the context of the chronic under-resourcing of the NHS, we explore how online patient feedback is differentially framed as ‘caring for care’ and as a means of diagnosing the silent pathology within the health service. Through comparing these two radically different perspectives on online feedback within the context of the NHS, we would like to prompt further discussion on the growth of online feedback, ratings and reviews as an emergent form of engagement with and evaluation of public healthcare services and the public sector more widely.
This SKAPE seminar will take place in a hybrid format.
For anyone wishing to join us in person, we will be in the Chrystal Macmillan Building, Room 3.15.
The seminar will also be available for remote participants who wish to join online via Zoom (for link details, please email the Co-Directors – if you are already a member/associate member of SKAPE, then you will receive a Zoom link two days before the start of the event).
Cover photo credit: Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash.