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

• Building Rural-Urban healthCare Equity for Scotland (BRUCES) – a multi-methods research programme in cancer, musculoskeletal health and frailty
• “But why is that better?” An investigation of what applied philosophy and ethics can bring to quality improvement work in healthcare
• 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.
• TRIADS: Translation Research in a Dental Setting (TRIADS) programme

Recently Completed Projects

• ACORN: Asynchronous Consultation Research for the NHS
• Care in Funerals: Learning from experiences during COVID-19 about what matters in funeral provision and why
• CASPER: Learning from healthcare professionals' experiences of using remote consulting for 'Care and Support Planning' during COVID-19
• 'Come and Work Here': exploring the experiences of remote and rural communities of trying to attract healthcare staff to their area
• COv-VOICES: Long Covid: Amplifying the voices of people with lived experience to improve understanding, support, treatment and education.
• Improving healthcare through advancing the evolution of audit and feedback
• PREP-AI-R: PREPare for the real-world evaluation of an Artificial Intelligent system for breast cancer scReening: The PREP-AI-R project
• VOICES: Experiences of vasculitis