Project 831 | Co-designing an Intervention to Improve the Human Fit of Access and Reduce Inequalities

Co-designing an Intervention to Improve the Human Fit of Access and Reduce Inequalities: Facilitating Reflective Opportunities for Patients and General Practice Staff to Close Equity Gaps, Sustain the Workforce, and Improve Patient Outcomes

What is the problem?

Access to general practice is an important issue in the NHS and in people’s lives. However, efforts to improve access are often top-down, target-based, and do not focus enough on patient and staff experiences.

What is our aim?

We aim to help patients and staff reflect on their experiences together to understand where there is a good fit, where there are gaps, and how those can be best addressed.

How will we do this?

We will use innovative outputs from our previous research to create an intervention with patients and staff in general practice sites. We will explore meaningful targets together that will show improvements that are important to patients and staff.

How has this been shaped by people’s lived experience?

A team of patients, carers, voluntary sector members, general practice staff, and commissioners have worked together since 2015 to design research on access that focuses on patient and staff experiences. This team has driven the direction of the research and played an active role at every stage.

How will we bring research into practice?

This work brings important research outputs directly into general practice to improve care for the benefit of patients and staff.