Towards Compassionate Governance: The Impact of Patient Voices on NHS Leadership

Abstract

Stanton explores the use of Patient Voices digital stories to illuminate his work with the Boards of the UK National Health Service and public sector bodies and clinicians. Analysing the origins of the ‘poetic qualities’ of digital stories, he attributes these to the process through which patients are helped and supported to reflect upon and ‘craft’ powerful or painful experiences into stories that illuminate the central importance of safe and compassionate care. These then trigger reflective debate about how such care is governed and delivered in the face of coincident, distractive and corrosive pressures. He concludes that, at a time when the NHS needs to transform in response to twenty-first-century challenges, those who lead this process can draw upon Patient Voices stories as sources of inspiration and courage.