Improving patient experience is a global priority for health policy-makers and care providers. The need to look at healthcare delivery through the eyes of patients is widely accepted, but how should it be done? What use can be made of this information, and what evidence is there that such exercises lead to better care? Understanding and Using Health Experiences: Improving patient care examines a broad range of different sources and techniques for gathering and analyzing health experiences. Providing an accessible and pragmatic overview of the diversity and richness of research in the field this book explores the strengths and limitations of different approaches, and assesses what each method can contribute to improving people's experience of illness, and the way that health services are delivered. The book looks at topics such as using focus groups to understand experiences of health and illness, patient surveys, and the internet as a source of information on people's experience. Using clear and engaging examples throughout, the book is accessibly written by experts in social science, health services, and health policy, and will be valuable to postgraduate students, healthcare practitioners, and individuals working in health and social policy, public sector management, and research.

Many healthcare improvement approaches originated in manufacturing, where end users are framed as consumers. But in healthcare, greater recognition of the complexity of relationships between patients, staff, and services (beyond a provider-consumer exchange) is generating new insights and approaches to healthcare improvement informed directly by patient and staff experience. Co-production sees patients as active contributors to their own health and explores how interactions with staff and services can best be supported. Co-design is a related but distinct creative process, where patients and staff work in partnership to improve services or develop interventions. Both approaches are promoted for their technocratic benefits (better experiences, more effective and safer services) and democratic rationales (enabling inclusivity and equity), but the evidence base remains limited. This Element explores the origins of co-production and co-design, the development of approaches in healthcare, and associated challenges; in reviewing the evidence, it highlights the implications for practice and research. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.