What does it take to learn from patient and caregiver experiences to improve healthcare? Key considerations from patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals at a Canadian hospital

Healthcare systems face ongoing challenges in advancing patient experience – an integral component of care quality. Patients and caregivers can play a critical role in identifying ways to improve experience. However, organisations tend to only learn from their experiences using a narrow set of approaches – typically patient experience surveys and complaints data – instead of drawing from a variety of methods such as focus groups or staff rounding. While surveys can yield a large sample and general trends, they tend to only provide a snapshot of a person’s healthcare experiences, are insufficient in fully capturing feedback, and are less likely to be completed by people from equity-deserving groups. As a result, survey data alone do not typically reflect the experiences of communities served by healthcare organisations. In this paper, we share findings from a qualitative exploratory study where we asked twenty-three patient and caregiver partners and healthcare professionals (e.g., leaders and staff) at a Canadian hospital about strategies to learn from experiential data to improve healthcare. We interviewed participants from a large, urban, academically affiliated community hospital in southern Ontario, which serves one of the most diverse communities in Canada. Using thematic analysis, we identified five important conditions for optimal collection of patient experience data: the need for organisations to communicate a clear purpose, create psychological safety, continuously learn throughout the patient journey, collect community level data, and use multiple approaches to learn about experience. Adopting these conditions has the potential to widen the breadth of experience data collected by organisations, ensuring that no voices are excluded from shaping quality improvement initiatives.