Led by Dr Caroline Sanders from The University of Manchester’s Centre for Primary Care the team – which includes a number of HeRC investigators – will work with 80 patients and carers to find out what sort of feedback they would like to give and through which format for instance, using mobile phones, digital or written surveys, audio, video. The team will also discuss with healthcare staff what information would be helpful to them when they’re making decisions on improving services.
The two-year project which links to HeRC’s Co-produced Health theme will focus specifically on two patient groups and their carers – people with serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, and people with musculoskeletal conditions, such as arthritis. Both groups tend to use lots of different NHS services, face difficulties in seeing the same staff at appointments and can be at risk of harm when services don’t work well.
Arthritis patient Annmarie Lewis said: “Things like continuity of service really matter to patients like me, so doctors and nurses understand how my condition affects me. I’m pleased this study will look at making better use of what we say.”
The research team will work alongside patients and NHS staff to design a set of materials to help staff improve the way they collect, analyse and use feedback. These materials will then be tested in different NHS settings: primary care, hospital outpatients, and community mental health services.
Dr Sanders said: “We know that patients and carers give really valuable insight into the NHS services they use and want their knowledge and experience to be taken into account. This research is trying to find the most helpful ways of collecting their views so we have accurate, up-to-date information that we can then analyse and use to improve care.”
The work is a joint project between The University of Manchester, Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust and Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust and is funded by the National Institute for Health Research’s Health Service and Delivery Research programme.
The two-year DEPEND (Developing and Enhancing the Usefulness of Patient Experience and Narrative Data) project will start in April 2016.
The full project team includes: Caroline Sanders, Shôn Lewis, Will Dixon, Peter Bower, Goran Nenadic, Ruth Boaden, Karina Lovell, Gavin Daker-White, John Ainsworth, Linda Davies, Evan Kontopantelis, Damian Hodgson, Patrick Cahoon, Neal Sinclair and Annmarie Lewis.
For further information please visit: http://www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/projects/hsdr/1415616
ENDS
Notes to editors:
Please contact Stephen Melia, Communications Officer at the Health eResearch Centre for more information. Email: stephen.melia@manchester.ac.uk Tel: 0161 306 7876 Mob: 07557 310 213
The Health eResearch Centre (HeRC) is delivering large scale, population wide health research by harnessing the power of information and technology.
Led by The University of Manchester and bringing together research excellence across the North of England (in partnership with the universities of Lancaster, Liverpool and York) the Health eResearch Centre is increasing the pace of progress in the UK’s health sector by turning under-used health information into new knowledge.
For more information please visit our website www.herc.ac.uk #datasaveslives