Improving Experiences of Care

The Improving Experiences of Care (ImpEC). theme is focused on improving experiences of care, both for people using care and their families and for staff providing care.

Our research is multidisciplinary and multi-method with a strong basis in the social sciences. It employs a range of health services skills and theories drawn from sociology, organisational behaviour, management, health psychology and philosophy. We use a range of tools to conduct and communicate their research including participatory action methods; social media; facilitated workshops and focus groups as well as interviews, surveys and other traditional forms of engagement.

The programme is supported by cross cutting methodological research and knowledge synthesis.

Current Project Highlights

• “But why is that better?” An investigation of what applied philosophy and ethics can bring to quality improvement work in healthcare.
• CASPER: Learning from healthcare professionals’ experiences of using remote consulting for ‘Care and Support Planning’ during COVID-19
• Improving healthcare through advancing the evolution of audit and feedback
• MuM-PreDiCT: Pregnancy with two or more long term health conditions: a qualitative study of experiences and care
• Plan A: Developing a decision aid to support pregnant women to choose between planning vaginal or caesarean birth during antenatal discussions with health professionals. 
• PREP-AI-R: PREPare for the real-world evaluation of an Artificial Intelligent system for breast cancer scReening: The PREP-AI-R project
• TRIADS: Translation Research in a Dental Setting (TRIADS) programme

Completed Project Highlights

• ACORN: Asynchronous Consultation Research for the NHS
• ActWELL
• Care in Funerals: Learning from experiences during COVID-19 about what matters in funeral provision and why
• 'Come and Work Here': exploring the experiences of remote and rural communities of trying to attract healthcare staff to their area
• Concept: SSM
• COv-VOICES: Long Covid: Amplifying the voices of people with lived experience to improve understanding, support, treatment and education.
• ECLS study: Early Cancer detection test - Lung cancer Scotland
• Enhancing recruitment and retention of rural doctors in Scotland: a mixed-methods study
• EuroFIT - Social innovation to improve physical activity and sedentary behaviour through elite European football 
• Geospatial Evaluation of Systems of Trauma Care for Scotland
• InS:PIRE
• Narrative accounts of primary care practitioners in a time of Covid-19
• Understanding family experiences of inherited motor neurone disease – a secondary analysis of qualitative research to develop a new resource for patients, families and clinicians on the Healthtalk website
• Using behavioural approaches to optimise antibiotic stewardship in hospitals
• US-Pex: Understanding how NHS frontline staff use patient experience data for service improvement (US-PEx)