As summer gets into full swing, this month's newsletter is all about celebrating the people and partnerships that make better experiences in health and care possible.
This month, we're marking Co-Production Week 2026, recognising the power of bringing patients, families, carers, service users and professionals together to design services that truly reflect people's needs. The themes running through the news in this edition - listening, inclusion, and technology that serves people rather than systems - all reflect that same commitment. It is also a theme close to our own work right now: our recent national survey workshops have been exploring the crucial difference between wait time and wait experience, and the King's Fund piece in this issue offers welcome external validation of that conversation.
We're also delighted to have extended the deadline for the PEN Awards 2026, giving even more teams the opportunity to share their inspiring work and gain the recognition it deserves. If you've been thinking about entering, there's still time.
As always, we've rounded up key awareness dates, a recommended read and the latest news. We hope you find something to inspire your own improvement journey.
Thank you for everything you continue to do to improve experiences for patients, families, carers and colleagues.
Happy reading!
The PEN Team
AWARENESS DAYS
Some dates for your diary coming up that you may want to make a note of coming up in July:
29th June - 3rd July - Co production Week
5th July - NHS's 77th Birthday and Research Appreciation Day
6th to 12th July - Alcohol Awareness Week
17th July - Disability Awareness Day
24th July - Samaritans Day
28th July - World Hepatitis Day
Entire July - Good Care Month (celebrating social care workers across the UK) & National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month
CASE STUDY
For this month's Case Study, we thought we would highlight some award winning co-production from the 2024 PEN Awards; a coproduction partnership to improve the sexual health of people of African and Caribbean heritage by
Common Ambition Bristol.
This project was the winner of the Commissioning for Patient Experience award and a finalist in the Partnership Working to Improve the Experience category too.
Following feedback from potential entrants, we've extended the deadline for the PEN Awards 2026 to give more teams the opportunity to showcase the outstanding work they're doing to improve patient, family, carer and staff experience.
We know many teams are balancing competing priorities while continuing to deliver innovative improvements. We don't want important work to miss out on the recognition it deserves simply because there wasn't enough time to complete an entry.
New deadline: Sunday 26th July 2026
If your project has made a difference to patient, family, carer or staff experience, we'd love to hear about it. Whether you've led a large-scale transformation or introduced a simple change with meaningful impact, there's a category for you.
Finalists have the opportunity to share their work with peers from across health and care while celebrating excellence in patient experience.
To help you out with your submissions this year, we asked some of our PEN awards judges to share their top tips on what they look for in a successful submission, their do's and don't when writing your entry and why they feel the PEN Awards are important for the health and care sector.
Take a watch below for some inspiration and guidance!
PICKER & PARTNER EVENTS
Co-Production Week
29th June - 3rd July VIRTUAL, ONLINE, FREE
Co-production brings patients, families, carers and service users together with health and care professionals to design and improve services that better reflect people's needs and experiences.
To mark Co-Production Week, we're highlighting how our Learning and Development programme has helped organisations build strong partnerships and create lasting improvements in care.
You can explore our Co-Production Week hub to watch a discussion between our Learning and Development Lead, Naomi Stockley, and practitioners Juliet Rayment and Sinead Rothrie, who share their experiences of using co-production to transform services.
You'll also find insights from experts using Experience-Based Co-Design (EBCD) and other collaborative approaches, alongside videos showcasing the positive impact these methods can have on people's experiences of care.
Browse examples and inspiration to help embed co-production in your own organisation.
Power to the People? The Ten year Plan, One Year On.
Picker Institute and The Patients Association Webinar
1st July, 11:00 VIRTUAL, ONLINE, FREE
Join us and The Patients Association on Wednesday 1st July (11:00-12:00, Zoom) for an insightful discussion exploring progress on the Ten Year Plan’s ambition to put patients at the heart of care.
Chaired by Dr Rageshri Dhairyawan, an NHS doctor and author, this webinar brings together leading voices from across the health sector to reflect on what has been achieved so far, and what still needs to happen to deliver “power to the people.”
Panellists Rachel Power (The Patients Association), Chris Graham (Picker), and Cheryl Tackie (Chair of NHS England’s National Cancer Programme’s Patient Partner Voice Forum, and a former keynote speaker and judge at the Picker Experience Network Awards) will share their perspectives on strengthening patient voice, expanding choice, and embedding person centred care across the system.
The session will examine key commitments from the Ten Year Plan, including the rollout of patient-reported outcome and experience measures, the use of the NHS App to gather and analyse feedback, and new approaches such as ‘Patient Power Payments’. Attendees will gain insights into the opportunities and challenges of implementation, as well as examples of best practice in patient engagement.
This session will be valuable for policymakers, NHS leaders, patient experience professionals, and anyone interested in understanding how to turn the Ten Year Plan’s ambitions into change for patients.
This National Summit focuses on supporting staff to deliver good complaint handling and implementing and monitoring adherence to the PHSO National NHS Complaint Standards which are now being used and embedded across the NHS. Through national updates, practical case studies and in depth expert sessions the conference aims to improve the effectiveness of complaints handling within your service, and ensure that complaints are welcomed and lead to change and improvements in patient care.
We are pleased to offer a 20% discount with code hcuk20pen to newsletter readers.
29th & 30th September 2026 IN PERSON, Excel, London
The leading event for the healthcare technology ecosyystem welcomes 3000+ public sector health attenees, 250+ expert speakers, and 150 cutting edge suppliers to spark innovation that transforms patient outcomes.
HETT is the annual progress report for the NHS. In an era of rapid digital evolution, the HETT show provides the definitive roadmap for digital health integration and Picker are going ot be there too! Why not join us!
1st October 2026 IN PERSON, University of Birmingham
The Picker Experience Network Awards are the first and only awards programme to recognise best practice in patient experience across all facets of health and social care in the UK and beyond.
They celebrate projects, teams, individuals, and initiatives that have made exceptional contributions to care, engagement, service delivery, and wellbeing from the perspective of patients, carers, families, and staff.
PATIENT EXPERIENCE BOOK CLUB
With co-production in mind, this month's book is The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker.
In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive--which they don't have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play.
Drawing on her expertise as a facilitator of high-powered gatherings around the world, Parker takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn't, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings, conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an summer camp, and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience.
The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of exciting ideas with real-world applications. The Art of Gathering will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue--and how you host and attend them.
How we respond to what patients tell us - and what we do with that knowledge - matters as much as any clinical intervention. These two pieces make that case from different angles.
The rise of the invisible patient experience Patients don't experience digital - they experience care." Richard Zane of UCHealth makes a deceptively simple but important point: as health systems invest in digital infrastructure, the patient experience risks becoming fragmented and invisible. Technology should follow the experience, not define it.
Waiting matters: bringing down NHS waiting lists is important but so is the experience of waiting Reducing waiting times dominates the NHS improvement agenda - rightly so. But this King's Fund blog argues that the quality of communication and support during a wait matters as much to people as its length. Access and experience are not separate goals.
Co-production is less a methodology than a disposition - a consistent commitment to involving patients, carers and staff in how care is designed and delivered. These three pieces show what that looks like in practice.
Ochsner uses staff experience to improve patient experience: 5 strategies Staff experience and patient experience are expressions of the same organisational culture. Ochsner Health in Louisiana puts numbers to that relationship and describes five practical strategies for improving both simultaneously - from sharing data across teams to building kindness into everyday interactions.
Closing the alignment gap: the next frontier for whole-person care: Closing the gap between what systems intend and what people actually experience requires more than good intentions. This Health Affairs piece describes a peer liaison model - community members with lived experience in funded roles advising on care design - as a practical and replicable example of co-production working at system level.
Language access in healthcare: aligning policy and evidence to improve patient experience: For patients who do not speak the dominant language of the system they are navigating, access to professional interpretation is not a nice-to-have - it shapes the entire experience of care. This study makes a clear evidence-based case for policy alignment, with direct relevance for NHS trusts and integrated care systems working on equity of experience.
The question is not whether to use technology but what it is for. These two pieces offer encouraging answers - both describe innovation chosen because it reduces anxiety and keeps people closer to home.
ChristianaCare study: AI avatar helps cancer patients feel less anxious before radiation visits A first-of-its-kind study found that patients who met a virtual AI doctor before their consultation reported better understanding, lower stress and higher satisfaction. The avatar was designed not to replace the clinician relationship but to prepare patients for it - a patient-centred use of AI that merits attention.
Hybrid hospital-at-home model increases physical activity and patient satisfaction
A hybrid model combining hospital-level oversight with home-based recovery is outperforming conventional inpatient care on physical activity and patient satisfaction. Published in JAMA and reported here, this is timely evidence for NHS systems looking to shift care closer to home without compromising safety or experience.
The Use of Co-Production and Development of a WhatsApp group to Improve Patient Experience of Adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes North West London Healthcare NHS Trust
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