Monday 9 March 2026 | 13:30-16:30
Stream: People
Session format: Workshop

This interactive session brings together two powerful approaches to transforming healthcare by embedding patient and community voices at every level. First, we explore how kindness and the What Matters To You movement can be turned into practical action, using structured tools like Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats to unlock fresh perspectives and reframe power in health systems. Then, we dive into the award-winning Quality and Patient Safety Partner (QPSP) programme at University Hospital Southampton, where patient partners move beyond “feedback” to co-lead on strategy, safety, and improvement. Together, these stories illustrate how co-production, kindness, and genuine partnership drive culture change, improve outcomes, and strengthen trust between services and the people they serve. Participants will leave with practical tools, tested strategies, and renewed commitment to doing healthcare not just for patients, but with them.

Part 1 - Kindness and What Matters to You? Partnering with patients: using different perspectives to turn theory into action

Building on our 2025 workshop with Conversations for Kindness and What Matters To You communities, this session explores how a shared theory of kindness drives real-world change. We’ll move from concept to action, showing how kindness improves clinical outcomes, patient experience, staff engagement, retention, and reduces costs.

Using last year’s feedback to be even more interactive, we will use Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats method, breaking into smaller groups to explore kindness from multiple perspectives - logical, emotional, creative, cautious, optimistic, organisational. We’ll share new research shaped by global voices and lived experience, and explore how kindness unlocks not just compassion, but power, especially the power of citizens to shape care.

This interactive session is for anyone - leaders, clinicians, carers - who wants to make kindness and co-production part of everyday healthcare. It offers fresh insights into how kindness and co-production build trust, distribute power, and enable human-centred systems to flourish.

After this session, participants will be able to:

• Articulate the shared theory of kindness in healthcare and its alignment with the What Matters To You movement.
• Apply practical tools to explore and embed kindness within their own teams, services, or systems.
  Identify and commit to meaningful actions that promote kindness in partnership with local communities.
• Understand how co-production and partnering with people using services leads to stronger relationships, power-sharing, and meaningful change.

Bob Klaber Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust; UK
Mathieu Louiset PAQS; Belgium
Anette Nilsson Region Jönköping County; Sweden

Part 2 - From feedback to front-seat: embedding patient voices in organisational strategy, learning and improvement

The NHS 10 year plan expects organisations to look to the public to decide their plans and drive accountability.

Are patient voices shaping your organisation’s strategy?

Join us to explore how University Hospital Southampton developed its award-winning Quality and Patient Safety Partner (QPSP) programme, moving beyond feedback to genuine co-leadership. QPSPs are not just “the patient voice” - they are advocates and enablers, helping services actively seek out lived experience and use it to shape improvement and set strategic direction.

After this session, participants will be able to:

• Benefit from practical insights into embedding patient partners in governance, safety, and improvement
• Participate in small-group discussions on co-production, engagement, and strategic involvement
• Explore how to amplify diverse voices, especially those with relevant lived experience
• Leave with tested tools, fresh ideas, and a renewed commitment to doing improvement with patients, not just for them.

It’s time to shift the conversation. Let’s put patients in the front seat

Christina Rennie University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust; UK
Kate Pryde University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust; UK