Almost every story on Care Opinion will have one or more tags attached to it. Tags help to describe a story to make it easier to find related stories or explore topics of interest.
For example, stories are tagged with conditions (diabetes, heart disease, dementia), procedures (scan, blood test, endoscopy), parts of the body (head, stomach, feet) or aspects of services (nursing, communication, timeliness, appointments).
Stories may also be tagged with how the story author felt: for example, upset, ignored, happy, relieved.
Tags added by authors or by Care Opinion
Almost all the tags you see attached to stories have been added by story authors (when they told their story) or by moderators (when they moderated the story). These tags don't usually change after the story is published.
Tags added by staff members
As a member of a subscription, you are also able to add your own tags to any stories on Care Opinion (so long as your subscription has this feature). You may want to add tags like those mentioned above, or you may want to make up completely new tags which suit your own purposes.
Tag visibility
When you add a tag to a story, you can decide who should be able to see the tag:
Private: if you add a tag as "private", only you can see it or search for it. It will not be visible to anyone else.
Shared: if you add a tag as "shared", you and other members of your subscription will be able to see it, so long as you are logged in. It will not be visible to people outside your subscription.
Public: if you add a tag as "public" then anyone using Care Opinion will be able to see it or search for it, whether they are logged in or not.
You can change the visibility of any tag you add at any time. You can also remove the tag at any time.
Tag polarity
If you want, when you add the tag you can also say whether it is added positively or negatively. By default, tags are added as neutral unless you say otherwise.
For example, you might add the tag "communication" as a positive (was good) or as a negative (could be better).
Why might you add tags to a story?
Adding tags to a story adds information which might in future benefit you, your colleagues or the wider world.
For example, perhaps you are compiling a report to identify and describe good and bad experiences of being on a waiting list. You might search for stories in a number of ways, using different terms. Every time you find a story which is useful for your report, you could add "waiting list project" as a shared tag.
Later, you can search using this tag to find all the stories again, export them in a report, or create a visualisation.
If colleagues are also involved in this project, they might also find stories of interest. They could add the same tag. If you all add the tag as shared, then you can pool the stories you have separately found into a single set of stories for analysis or reporting.