NHS Voices of Covid-19: Impacts from our work in creating a national collection of personal testimonies about the significance of the Covid-19 pandemic

Narrative

Covid-19 will stand as an extraordinary period in NHS and wider history. We are creating a national collection of personal testimonies to capture the social significance of the pandemic. The collection will be archived and publicly available in the British Library. We have to date interviewed over 1340 interviewees including NHS staff, patients, volunteers, and carers during the crisis to capture personal stories and reflections that will provide a unique historical footprint. These experiences will provide a rich research resource for future generations and are informing policy and practice during the pandemic recovery period e.g. our evidence cited by British Academy in Covid-19 and Society evidence review (March 2021), oral evidence presented by Professor Snow to APPG on coronavirus (August 2021), our evidence cited by House of Commons NHS backlogs and waiting times in England report (March 2022).

The collection is now available at The British Library as part of "Voices of Our National Health Service". The British Library has also curated a 'Covid Stories' website which features articles focusing on testimonies recorded by us during Covid-19.

Impact date	Mar 2020
Category of impact	Awareness and understanding, Attitudes and behaviours, Policy
Impact level	Benefit