A mountain of toolkits. That’s what this brilliant interactive tool from the Patient Experience Library found when it audited the materials helping health organisations engage with patients and the public.
Between 2012 and 2022, one new toolkit was published every two weeks and in 2016-20, one a week.
It’s so important that health services are designed around what people actually need, in ways that work for them – which is why public and patient involvement is a Very Good Thing. And it’s a complicated business, which is why toolkits are brilliant to help people working in those services learn how to do it – as long as people are actually using and reading them!
Now, I actually do love a toolkit (I have been known in the past as ‘toolkit Eleanor’ – I *think* that’s a compliment) and I’m responsible for some of this mountain (like the Experience-Based Co-Design Toolkit and others hosted by the Point of Care Foundation). But the sheer volume does indicate that there’s a lot more time spent developing them than actually doing the business of engaging with people who use services.
For me, this is a good reminder that we really need to interrogate the ‘why’ of every publishing project at commissioning stage and to evaluate impact afterwards. It all goes back to the question of audience and need. Especially in the statutory and charity sectors, the last thing we want to do is to waste resources and duplicate effort.
See the resource at: https://lnkd.in/epUYBhwh