With hundreds of analyses and thousands of video and audio interview clips on over 60 health conditions, Healthtalkonline.org is a wonderful resource for both the general public and for health and social care professionals. One of our key jobs as HERG researchers is to spread the word about the website to as many people as possible and speaking at conferences is a good way of doing this. I recently had the pleasure of presenting a keynote address at the Rehabilitation and Therapy Research Society annual conference at University of Limerick.

In my talk: ‘Healthtalkonline.org: capturing the patient experience through qualitative research’ I introduced physiotherapists, speech therapists and occupational therapists to Healthtalkonline.org, explaining how we use qualitative research to sample, collect and analyse interviews with individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds throughout the UK to produce the website. During the 40 minute talk, I used clips from the Stroke section to illustrate how people’s stories of health and illness can offer health professionals insights into what it’s really like to live with a condition. I also talked about how the website might be used to teach communication skills, improve service provision, and inform policy. Feedback from the presentation has been very positive, with clinical therapists, researchers and educators keen to explore the many opportunities the website offers.

Jenny