Improving support for patients while they wait for care

The challenge

Oxleas wanted to improve how it supports people waiting for care. The Trust was aware that many patients have to wait for a period of time between being referred to the Trust and beginning treatment.

Delivering the right care at the right time is a priority in Oxleas’ ‘Our Next Step’ strategy. But in some cases people still experience a wait. The Trust wanted to understand what it could do to support people more during this time.

Oxleas reached out to Kaleidoscope to find out what people find helpful when waiting for care, and explore options would make a positive difference.

Our approach

Our research approach aimed to deliver real engagement from patients and produce practical recommendations for Oxleas.

We started by engaging patients and carers through focus groups and interviews, so they could share suggestions and experiences.

Due to Covid-19 considerations at the time, only digital workshops were possible. To make them as accessible as possible, we used captioning, varied methods of engagement and provided technical support for participants, before and during the event.

To reach a representative set of patients, we identified patient groups that had not been able to attend the workshops (for example those that were digitally excluded). We co-designed a set of semi-structured accessible questions with people with lived experience of waiting for care and then conducted targeted telephone interviews with a wider group of patients.

Using thematic and content analysis we identified significant recurring themes from the focus groups and interviews. We produced those findings in a report with key recommendations that Oxleas could share with their stakeholders.

The results

We explored the experiences and recommendations of people who had waited for care at Oxleas through a safe, accessible and codesigned methodology. Those findings were used to create resources and best practice to support Oxleas patients better including;

• understanding what patients expectations are while waiting,
• what types of support would help them,
• what information they need while waiting for care,

As a result of this research clinical teams know the information they should include and the support that they should signpost to when communicating with people who have been referred to Oxleas services. The findings have also been used by co-production groups to create materials and resources for patients on waiting lists.

When you’re waiting for care and you need to get information about your condition, it’s important to feel respected and that you have been listened to. It matters that the health team understands your situation and what you want.

A quote from a patient who took part in our research