NIHR HS&DR – Understanding and enhancing how hospital staff learn from and act on patient experience data
(November 2015 – Present)

Patients are increasingly being asked for feedback about their experiences of the healthcare they have received. However, healthcare staff often find it difficult to act on this feedback in order to make improvements to services. The Quality & Safety research team have been funded by NIHR HS&DR to conduct a 32 month study to understand, and then enhance how ward staff can make better use of patient experience feedback. This research will be conducted with six teams of ward staff across six wards in three hospital Trusts. The core objectives are:

  1. To understand what patient experience measures are currently collected, collated, and used to inform service improvement and care delivery.
  2. To co-design and implement a patient experience improvement toolkit (PEIT) using an action research methodology.
  3. To identify transferable learning about how wards use the PEIT and the factors that influence this.
  4. To refine and disseminate the patient experience improvement toolkit.

We will conduct a scoping review of the academic and grey literature and qualitative data collection (focus groups, interviews and observations) with ward staff and board members will address the first objective. The second objective will be achieved through action research underpinned by a participatory design process where a patient experience improvement toolkit (PEIT) will be co-designed by patients and ward staff.  A process evaluation of the implementation of the PEIT will produce transferable and generalizable learning about how the toolkit is used in practice, and what factors influence its use (objective 3). The final stage of the research project involves the refinement and dissemination of the toolkit through collaboration with local and national networks (objective 4).

Project information available here.
The study protocol can be accessed here.
March 2017 progress report can be accessed here.
Restricted Access – Reflection-in-Action.