Questionnaires versus online feedback

Patient feedback is integral to safety and quality of care.  And an NHS that aims to be person-centred needs to understand patient experience really well.

Attempts to understand patient experience often involve structured questionnaires.  But in a digital age, more and more people are bypassing formal surveys, and giving feedback online.  

This study looks at the requirement to include patient views in regulatory processes such as medical revalidation. It asks whether questionnaires are tackling the right questions in the right way, and whether they align with the kinds of issues that patients address in online feedback.  The study focused specifically on patient experience of psychiatric care.

A key finding is that patients describe some different measures of psychiatric care quality online and use different terminology to those used in questionnaires. This may reflect the acknowledged exclusion of patients and the public in the design, administration and evaluation of patient feedback questionnaires, accentuating the importance of coproduction.

Another finding is that when psychiatric patients discuss their care online, they rarely focus on the care provided by a single psychiatrist alone.  Other healthcare individuals, services, systems or processes are also described.  The authors suggest that the current GMC revalidation requirement for patients to disaggregate the care provided by an individual practitioner from the wider healthcare team, service or environment is therefore unhelpful.

Timeliness matters too.  Working online, patients can offer feedback as and when they need to.  But, say the authors, "The current requirement to collect patient feedback so infrequently (once every five years) sends the message, whether intentional or not, that patient feedback is unimportant".

The study concludes that "The sharing of healthcare experiences online could help create desirable and dynamic transparency to the benefit of both current and future patients".

You can download the report via our website.
 

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