Authors' objectives: Patients and carers experiences of hospital care are an important aspect of healthcare quality. In the NHS, whether as part of internal and external quality inspections or regulatory processes, information about the quality of patients experiences is collected continually in various ways. This information is also known as patient experience data and it is collected through a variety of tools, for example questionnaires (including the National Patient Experience Survey), simple questions (including the nationally required Friends & Family test FFT), formal and informal complaints and compliments, digital hand-held devices given to patients on wards ( real-time data), and written accounts or video/audio recordings of patient stories recorded through face-to-face interviews, patient/public websites (including NHS Choices, Patient Opinion), and/or social media. Recent research has highlighted that despite the vast quantity of information that is collected about patients experiences and which is available to NHS organisations, it is not clear how this information is used to plan and achieve improvement in the quality of care. This study will explore how patient experience data translate into quality improvements in acute NHS hospital services. Given that in NHS organisations nurses (whether in senior managerial or frontline roles) are often responsible for improving the patient experience on the basis of what patient experience data reveal, the study will pay particular attention to the role of nurses. The study is organised in two phases. In Phase 1 we will use a research approach that focuses on the tools used to capture information on patient experience to study the journeys and the impact on practice of patient experience data in four NHS hospitals in England. In each of these hospitals we will examine the journeys of patient experience data in the context of two clinical services - dementia and cancer care to explore similarities and differences between services. In Phase 2 we will hold a set of meetings with hospital managers, frontline staff, and patients and carers from the four hospitals involved in the study to discuss the findings from Phase 1 and develop practical recommendations for NHS managers, clinical staff, policymakers and patients. The study will generate important new understandings and recommendations at three different levels of healthcare services: 1) everyday practices - it will help us to understand what difference the collection of patient experience data actually makes to patients' and carers' experiences; 2) organisational management - it will provide information on the managerial resources and limitations that influence the impact of patient experience data on NHS services; 3) policy it will look at how strategies and practices at levels 1 and 2 are shaped by national healthcare policies.

Project Status: Completed

URL for project: http://www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/projects/hsdr/1415608

Year Published: 2019

URL for published report: http://www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/projects/hsdr/1415608

English language abstract: An English language summary is available

Publication Type: Not Assigned

Country: England, United Kingdom

Organisation Name: NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research programme

Contact Address: NIHR Journals Library, National Institute for Health and Care Research, Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre, Alpha House, University of Southampton Science Park, Southampton SO16 7NS, UK

Contact Name: journals.library@nihr.ac.uk

Contact Email: journals.library@nihr.ac.uk

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