In September we held our first virtual conference which saw more than 370 people join us online for a day of sharing knowledge and learning.
Having had to cancel our traditional event in June, it was exciting to be able to organise the event differently and hear about many of the research and improvement projects that have taken place over the past year in Solent.
As ever, this was a Patients Included accredited event – it was planned and delivered in partnership with our Side-by-Side network, and the event was open to all of our patients and the public. Many of the presentations at the conference were given by our patient partners and it was amazing to see our staff members, patients and community come together virtually.
The day was a mixture of presentations, posters and interactive events. Our Trust Chair, Catherine Mason, and CEO, Sue Harriman, opened the event with a warm welcome, and Prof Saul Faust (Professor of Immunology at the University of Southampton) delivered a keynote on COVID research and vaccine development.
Other presentations included covered topics such as innovations around using home monitoring during COVID, and the development of a well-being app. We heard from service user partner, Bethany Wood, on the development of a series of pocket memory aids to help during recovery from Mental Health illness, and Mary Ramsay spoke about working alongside with our Specialist Dental Team to create dementia-friendly spaces. We also held our first mini workshop on our co-designed ‘Patients in QI training’ (thanks to Roger Stevens and Paula Tyler) and so much more.
During the day, a poster cinema ran with voting for the People’s Choice winner. Sarah Obourne (pictured), Training Lead for our Southampton Nursing team won with her poster on “Making Clinical Supervision better through Staff Views”.
The day ended with a series of feedback polls (4.5 stars out of 5!) and a close from Dr Dan Baylis, Chief Medical Officer.
Dr Sarah Williams, Associate Director for Research and Improvement said:
“What an amazing day – an extremely steep learning curve understand the technology behind a virtual platform, but I’m so glad that we got the opportunity to get together again (apart) and hear about some of the great work from across our Trust. Huge thanks to our Side-by-Side colleagues who helped us more than they will admit, and who deserve all the credit for the goodie bag idea."
To take a look at the presentations and posters from the day, please visit the 2020 Virtual Conference webpage or follow #SolentConf20 on twitter.
See you at #SolentConf21 for our 10th Anniversary.