Kelly Turner is the operations manager of Care Opinion Canada, a program of the Alberta-based non-profit Imagine Citizens Network that enables patients, families, and healthcare professionals to share their experiences with health and social care services.
Health systems around the world are awakening to a critical truth: when we truly listen to those who use the system, we open the door to more compassionate, responsive, and equitable care. That makes the voices of patients and families critical; their experience illuminates aspects of healthcare that metrics alone cannot capture.
Stories are not simply reflections of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. They are complex, layered accounts of what matters most. When patients, family members and caregivers speak, they offer not just opinions but their insights. They bring forward evidence of how the system is working and where it is failing.
What made someone feel safe or not?
Where was trust built or broken?
Yet today, patient and family feedback is often framed as a “nice to have” courtesy or a perfunctory compliance requirement rather than a necessary mechanism for learning and accountability. This framing fails to recognize the generative power of experience as a source of knowledge. Critical, feedback is often reduced to data points rather than expanded into stories.
We at Care Opinion are seeking a shift in how feedback is both given and received. Adapted from an established UK model, our platform serves as a relational and participatory approach to system improvement, complementing existing channels by offering feedback that is grounded in storytelling. By enabling people to share their healthcare experiences publicly and anonymously, it creates a transparent space for reflection, dialogue, and shared learning between patients, families, and healthcare providers.
The IJB’s ongoing research into patient experience included gathering five years worth of patient survey data from 50 Ontario hospitals and making it public for the first time. The data showed at least 21 of the hospitals had in-patient units or emergency departments that consistently scored poorly on patient experience, raising questions about whether they worked to address problems identified by patients or even had the resources to do so. Meanwhile, at least seven hospitals failed to retain all the comments that patients had written when filling out the surveys.
Stories function as a kind of moral data. They are not simply accounts of what happened; they are windows into what mattered. They draw our attention to the emotional, cultural, and interpersonal dimensions of care. The tone of a conversation, the silence in a hallway, the way someone was, or was not, included in a decision; these stories can challenge official accounts and highlight gaps that metrics often miss.
And storytelling is not just a gift to the system. It is, for many, an act of healing. As Kimberley, a Care Opinion storyteller, shared.
In May 2024, Kimberley nearly lost her life after giving birth to her second daughter, when she contracted sepsis and invasive Group A Strep. Thanks to the swift, compassionate care at Rockyview General Hospital, she survived a life-threatening infection and major emergency surgery. Grateful for the care she received, Kimberley shared her story on Care Opinion to thank every person involved in saving her life.
“Being a ‘storyteller’ to me now means more than just sharing my experience; it’s about conveying the emotions, lessons, and growth that come with that experience. I enjoy connecting with others through shared vulnerability and genuineness. By sharing my story, I’ve found a sense of calm, allowing me to reflect, process, and heal in ways I hadn’t expected.”
– Kimberly Sidhu
Kimberley’s reflection reminds us that feedback is not just an instrument of change for institutions, it is also a path to healing for patients. Her story reflects not just what happened, but how it felt, what was lost, and what can be learned. Ultimately, it’s about how things could be better.
This matters profoundly, especially for racialized individuals, newcomers, people living with disability, Indigenous families and other groups historically excluded from healthcare conversations. Traditional feedback mechanisms tend to favour those who feel safe engaging with institutions, yet people must be empowered to speak without fear and on their own terms.
None of this is theoretical. In our work with health organisations we have seen how patient stories can shape practice and policy when they are received with humility and curiosity. Culture shifts when feedback is treated not as a threat to be managed but as a relationship to be nurtured.
To treat patient and family voices as optional is to overlook a rich source of learning. It is not enough to ask people how they feel about their care—we must create mechanisms through which that feedback can lead to action. Feedback kept in the dark helps no one. But feedback made visible, contextualized by story, and used in service of learning can be transformative.
If we want a healthcare system that is truly people centred, we must treat people’s experiences as evidence. As Kimberley’s words remind us, narrative is about being understood. It can spark our collective imagination to build a better system.
When we truly understand, we not only transform systems, we affirm our shared humanity.
Read the Investigation
About seven months after undergoing a surgery that left her in unbearable, life altering pain, Vinesha Ramasamy filled out a survey from the hospital asking for feedback on her care.
She had gone to the downtown Toronto hospital in July 2021 for a biopsy that would allow doctors to determine whether the suspicious growth on her lung was a return of the cancer that had nearly killed her.
But something went wrong.
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