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Table 3 Strengths and weaknesses of each method for local quality improvement

From: Using patients’ experiences to identify priorities for quality improvement in breast cancer care: patient narratives, surveys or both?

 

Strengths

Weaknesses

EBCD

•covers whole patient pathway or journey

•good for providing specific detail for local quality improvement purposes

•engages clinicians and other staff

•can be highly specific for a service

•good on relational/emotional aspects of experiences

•inductive: quality issues are determined by patients during the interviews and at patient events

•not always representative

generally thought to be relatively time-consuming and expensive when compared to surveys (although not the case in this study)

requires specific qualitative research skills to ensure a valid and reliable analysis

difficult to use for performance monitoring purposes over time or across institutions requires sufficient participants for involvement in co-design group process.

SURVEY

•representative

can engage clinicians and other staff if fed back promptly and at service level

good for identifying issues with functional aspects of experience

may identify specific actions needed in some areas and other issues requiring further investigation

good for comparing between groups, institutions and for performance monitoring over time

open patient comments, if collected and analyzed, may provide additional understanding of issues identified

•may need to focus on specific service or parts of the patient journey to avoid burdening patients with a long questionnaire

findings may need further investigation to identify actions for local quality improvement purposes

deductive: quality issues are pre-determined by researchers/staff/patients in the development process

requires technical expertise around survey design, administration and analysis to ensure valid and reliable

relies on large enough sample size

Social desirability may influence telephone survey responses if they are not perceived as anonymous