Learning and development

About the Experiences of Care programme

Our Experience of Care programme takes a range of forms from open access courses offering practical skills development, to formal accredited professional qualifications. Our support in this area covers general training for individuals or bespoke training for teams or departments.

Our Patient Experience, Quality Improvement and Co-Design courses enable staff to step into patients’ shoes and see care through their eyes. Using tried, tested and effective tools and experiential techniques, our courses help staff get as close to experiencing the patient’s journey as possible.

Our Experiences of Care work is built upon proven methodologies — Experience Based Co-Design (EBCD) and Patient and Family Centred Care (PFCC) — and we work with a strong faculty with broad experience of patient experience, quality improvement and co-design. 

We also publish a range of toolkits to support others to use the EBCD, PFCC and other methodologies.

Our patient experience work is inspired by Keiran Sweeney (1951–2009), a GP and medical scholar who wrote about the need for a compassion-based understanding of medicine. He died of mesothelioma, and during his illness, wrote about his experiences, urgently calling for healthcare staff to improve the relational aspects of their care by considering the patient’s perspective and making changes accordingly.