Earlier this year the Narrative Practices Lab ran two online focus groups to inform the development of Enduring Voices – a new repository for the Patient Voices collection of digital health stories. Thank you to everyone who participated for sharing their ideas and expertise so generously!
Facilitated by Mary Robson (Creative Facilitator) and Victoria Patton (Senior Digital Development and Communications Manager), the focus groups included participants from South West Yorkshire NHS Foundation Trust, VONNE, and ReCoCo, as well as people living with complex health conditions, their families and carers.
Both focus groups were struck by the range of potential uses for the Patient Voices collection, its extent, and the diversity of experiences of health and illness that it represents. All participants were enthusiastic about the Enduring Voices project and the possibility of a new repository hosted by Durham University that would make the digital stories more widely accessible to researchers and members of the public, as well as help preserve the stories for the future.
The groups also shared some useful ideas on presentation, potential search interfaces and navigation systems, and advice on possible filters and categories that could help facilitate the use of the stories in a range of contexts, including health research, teaching, and NHS training programmes.
These insights will now help to shape the development of the new Enduring Voices repository that the Lab is developing, led by Laura Mazzoli Smith and Tony Sumner, one of the co-founders of Patient Voices.
We’ll be sharing our progress on this project here, so please keep checking the website for more information and updates.
