Analysing parent feedback

Experiences from the Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust show how data from publicly available sources can be combined with AI-enabled analysis to deliver cost-effective, high-quality feedback

Parent feedback: perception of parents and pediatric residents in Asian culture

Background Residency programs have used feedback of parents as a part of multisource feedback to improve residents’ skills. However, there is no evidence showing how parents can appropriately be engaged in pediatric resident feedback in our context. This study aimed to investigate: 1) the resident skills assessed by parents in perception of Thai parents and pediatric residents and 2) the parent characteristics making credible feedback in perception of Thai pediatric residents. Methods The participating parents were asked to rate their confident to assess residents’ skills according to 17 items of the PARENTS questionnaire (Likert scale 1–5). To enhance the reasons of parent’s confident, the parents responded to think aloud interviews. We conducted focus groups in order to explore the resident perception on parents’ assessable resident skills and credible parent characteristics. Results There were 51 parents revealing the mean confident scores of 17 items ranged from 4.06 to 4.37. The parents felt confident to assess the residents’ skills according to the questionnaire because they directly experienced the residents’ performance during admissions. Five resident focus groups were conducted. In resident perception, residents’ skills in communication, collaboration, leadership and professionalism were assessable by parents. The characteristics affecting the feedback credibility included parents’ prior experience, personal behavior and confrontation to medical situation. Conclusions Thai residency programs may use parent feedback for residents’ performance improvement as both parents and residents are able to identify the parents’ assessable skills. The feedback process should consider the credible parents’ characteristics to increase the acceptability and avoid the bias.

Rethinking engagement

People affected by health conditions bring insights and wisdom to transform healthcare – ‘jewels from the caves of suffering'. Yet traditional patient and public engagement relies on (child–parent) feedback or (adolescent–parent) ‘representative' approaches that fail to value this expertise and buffers patients' influence. This editorial outlines the emergence of ‘patient leadership' and work in the Sussex Musculoskeletal Partnership, its patient director (the first such role in the National Health Service) and a group of patient/carer partners, who are becoming equal partners in decision-making helping to reframe problems, generate insight, shift dynamics and change practice within improvement and governance work.Declaration of interestDavid Gilbert is Director of InHealth Associates Ltd, a small consultancy organisation that supports patient and public engagement.