HSE Patient and Public Partnership Conference 2025

The third HSE Patient and Public Partnership Conference took place today with hundreds of attendees sharing their experiences in order to make our health services better. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Navigating Our Patient Partnership Journey Together’ and builds on the progress and evolving collaboration between the HSE and the people who use our services.

Patient partnerships are an important and valuable resource for the HSE. They ensure the voices and experiences of people with lived experiences are heard and enabled to have real and meaningful impact on the design, delivery and evaluation of healthcare services.

Patient and lived experiences were discussed through a wide range of areas including disability services, homelessness, mental health, technology, chronic diseases, and children’s rights. Partnership organisations and individuals participated in workshops, plenary sessions and Q&As, building on the initiatives already in place and sparking new ideas.

The HSE CEO, Bernard Gloster, said: “With the establishment of six Health Regions last year, the HSE placed patient partnership at the heart of our mission to deliver truly patient-centred care. We worked closely with those who have lived experience of our services to ensure their insights actively shaped how we improve healthcare services.

“To embed this commitment across the system, each Health Region has now appointed a dedicated, full-time Public Patient Engagement Lead. These leaders will champion meaningful involvement of patients and service users in shaping local healthcare delivery.

“In addition, we co-designed a new national role - Patient Service User Lead - alongside our patient partners. This position will ensure that the voices of those we serve are heard beyond the traditional feedback and complaints channels. The appointment to this role will be announced shortly.”

Joe Ryan, HSE National Director, Public Involvement, Culture and Risk Management, said: ‘‘Teamwork is key to the effective delivery of health and social care services and we thank all our patient partners for working with us to create equal, meaningful and sustainable partnerships across our services. This is the third year of the conference and there has been a lot of progress made on developing and establishing the patient voice in everything we do. This conference is an opportunity for us to reflect on how far we have come, to share our learning and experiences together, to build on what we have achieved to make ’The HSE Our HSE’ a reality.”

This third annual HSE Patient and Public Partnership Conference is organised by the HSE in partnership with patient partnership groups including the National Patient and Service User Forum.