Hello
As lots of you will know, three years ago we re-launched our Miscarriage Code of Care campaign, which grew out of Mumsnet posters' experiences and concerns about the care some women receive when undergoing treatment for a miscarriage. And we know that there are still lots of you who are having tough times, and receiving care (whether in or out of hospital) that is less than ideal.
So to help us to plan the next phase of activity on the campaign, we're asking MNers to share their stories of what how they've been treated during their recent (within the last two years or so) experiences of miscarriage.
When we carried out a Freedom of Information exercise in 2012, lots of hospital trusts seemed to be saying that they had implemented many of the terms of our Code of Care - but some recent threads on MN indicate that lots of you are still experiencing poor treatment and care. And where this goes against the stated policies of hospital trusts, we think the management of the trust should be held to account.
So we've decided to trial the idea of working with the website Patient Opinion, an independent health service feedback site which aims to 'pass your stories on to the right people to make a difference'. You can see more information about what Patient Opinion does, and how it works with people's information, here.
We're asking Mumsnetters - where they are comfortable doing so - to post accounts of their experiences, good and bad, using this link. Obviously we realise that this is a very sensitive area, and lots of you will have anonymity concerns, so read on to see how it all works.
If you submit your story, it will be published on a dedicated Mumsnet page on Patient Opinion. Whenever a hospital trust responds to one of the points our users have made, that will be flagged up as well. Accounts of miscarriage-related experiences from other Patient Opinion users will also be shown on this page.
You can choose an anonymous username on Patient Opinion, so nobody will be able to link your account on there to your account on Mumsnet.
Being able to track what sorts of issues people are flagging will hopefully be a powerful tool for us at MNHQ, enabling us to see what sorts of problems are still occurring, and how responses from individual trusts measure up against their Freedom of Information responses. The information will also be really useful to us in deciding where best to concentrate the next phase of the campaign.
So for those of you who feel able to help, do please get posting your experiences. Once we have some published stories (and, hopefully, constructive responses from the trusts) to share with you all, we'll come back with a link to the page where they can be seen.
Thanks - as ever, do please let us know what you think.
MNHQ