Table 2.

Facilitators described by participants ordered according to frequency.

Facilitator	Verbatim examples taken from transcripts
Engage as many (relevant) people as possible	“Get as many people onto it, give access to your specialist nurses, the people who are front facing, your ward sisters, your deputies on the ward, so they can see this feedback and reply to patients … because that's a big benefit and something that I think it's just really good practice” (Clinical manager, participant 10)
Provide responder training	“We've actually provided response training … giving them some proper guidance, proper training, so they have the confidence and they're not going to be weary of it” (PFET, participant 2)
Get stakeholder buy in, particularly at senior level	“Get your board on board, make sure you’ve got buy in from quite a high level because otherwise, everyone is so busy, it will just get overtaken by something else that is more of a priority for the Trust at the time” (PFET, participant 2)
Provide support
Patient experience team	“We always say, the first time, if you do receive a bit of feedback that is mixed or negative, and you’re not sure what to say, give one of our team a call and we will come and sit with you and do it with you, you feel like you’ve got a bit of a safety net if you like” (PFET, participant 2)
Staff support services	“I know that she's [patient experience team member] really supportive, and I know that I'm comfortable to ask her questions if I'm stuck. I think as long as you have the right training and the right support, it’s absolutely fine…I didn't have any concerns or worries about it … they’ve been absolutely brilliant, it's making sure you've got someone there to ask questions I think” (Clinical staff member, participant 11)
	“Also putting things in place, like through occupational health, so if anything is causing staff anxiety or stress, they have people to speak to, so I think it’s really about us as a trust letting them know who they can go to if they are affected by anything that is mentioned online” (PFET, participant 2)
Showcase feedback
Social media	“We are tweeting most days, we have our [hastag’s] #TransformationTuesday, and #FeedbackFriday. It’s a really good way of being able to promote it and we do get quite a lot of comeback on that which is good…We share snippets of stories, we normally do it in a pictorial sort of way, so it’s a quick quote and then we invite staff to access the link to the full story. That’s really well received, especially when you’re tagging the appropriate people, they can then share it with their teams” (PFET, Participant 8)
Know how you’re doing boards	“In all of our wards and departments, we have ‘know how you're doing boards’, which tell people, staff and the public how this ward is doing, and it has their performance metrics in there. We put a couple for Care Opinion in there, and every ward has a space on their ‘know how you're doing’ board to display the latest bit of feedback. So, if they've had no feedback, there’s a slide in their for people to say, ‘tell us your story’” (Clinical manager, participant 3)
On wards and departments	“We’ve had feedback from people to say we’ve been able to put it up around the department and that’s across the disciplines so medical staff, therapy, nursing and its specific to their area” (Clinical manager, participant 10)
Staff rooms	“Quite often you’re going into the nurses office and they’ve got the quotes printed out and put on their wall, so they’re hearing what people are saying which is really, really lovely” (PFET, participant 8)
Advertise/use promotional materials
Promotional materials	“Get Care Opinion to send you all of the materials they can, they have posters, lovely business cards, lots of things that you can really put around the trust to really raise awareness for patients and staff, really use those materials” (PFET, participant 1)
Business cards	“We give all our staff the business cards” (PFET, participant 8)
Posters	“Putting posters up everywhere” (PFET, participant 1)
QR codes	“It has a QR code so people can scan that and it would take them…straight to the platform” (Clinical manager, participant 3)
Hospital website	“The hospital website now hosts the last five comments on Care Opinion” (Clinical manager, participant 3)
Waiting room electronic displays	“We’ve got the slides now throughout our trust in our waiting area” (PFET, participant 2)
Provide an offline option	“There was a story teller who spoke about his nan not being able to leave feedback and she couldn't quite grasp the concept of doing it online, and that really highlighted to us that we had nowhere for people to write [feedback for Care Opinion]. We [now] have, the free post cards where you can write and send them in, we've now got them in public areas, and invite that feedback, so that story has been really, really, really useful to us, and we've been able to make a really quick change. We get quite a few posted that way now” (PFET, participant 8)
Use league tables	“I think one of the things that has been important to us…is the league table about organisations adoption of Care Opinion and how we’re doing. We’ve enjoyed in this first year climbing that table of more listeners and responders. I think that’s been useful in the organisation as well, we’ve been able to say look, we are into the top 25, we’ve now broken through the top 15. It’s a good way of bringing people on and engaging people with the platform, because we do want to be actively listening to patients. It’s a positive way to be able to go to board and say, ‘we are an active listening organisation’, ‘We’re third in the country that have got the most people listening through this platform’” (Clinical manager, participant 3)
Share online feedback at staff inductions and pre-registration trainee meetings	“We now go to pre-registration trainee meetings, so people that are coming in to train as nurses and we’re sort of capturing at the point of entering the trust as well, to think that actually Care Opinion is there, and people can share their story that way” (PFET, participant 8); “It’s about sharing things like Care Opinion in induction” (PFET, participant 2)
Don’t be afraid to say sorry	“Don’t be afraid to say sorry about someone’s experiences, because I think a lot of us working I the NHS we feel if we say sorry, we’re admitting fault in some way and people get worried about that. I think it’s just having a bit of a shift on that … I’m saying sorry because of your experience, and that sorry can go a long way” (PFET, participant 8)
Target specific teams	“We’re picking teams off specifically to use it” (Clinical manager, participant 3)
Collaborate with external organisations	“We’re really pleased that we’re able to collaborate with our local HealthWatch. As an organisation they often respond to experience feedback and are happy to give it back to us. But, it was often quite old and historical experience and it made us really struggle to respond to it because it wasn't that ‘real-time’ … We worked really hard with them to make them understand that we want ‘real-time’ feedback … They're now out capturing experiences around the county” (Clinical manager, participant 3)
Be proactive	“It’s a positive, proactive strategy to involve staff, it’s been very active to involve as many people as possible” (Care Opinion staff member, participant 6)
Push for relevant responders	“We definitely want to make sure that we have staff responding from every area, so it’s actually so important when service-users leave their feedback, when the response comes from someone in the [patient experience] team. I think it means so much more to them” (PFET, participant 2)
Sign up staff to alerts	“They now get alerts directly so any stories that are posted where positive or negative they’ll receive an alert and that’s part of their training, they sign up to share that with their staff” (PFET, participant 2)
Identify staff benefits	“We say we’ll train you up. It will be really good for your development’, and ‘it’s something that you can take forward for your ward” (PFET, participant 1)
Cover areas without a responder	“Any services that we get feedback for, that we haven't got a responder for within the service, our team monitor it all the time, so we will copy and paste the story, copy and paste our response saying thank you very much and we're going to share it with the team, and we will email that to the relevant manager for that department and ask that they share it with the relevant staff” (PFET, participant 2)

PFET: patient and family experience team member.