Quality Time: Using experience-based co-design to capture emergency department staff experience

Abstract

Experience-based co-design (EBCD) is a quality improvement approach that enables patients, carers, and staff to gain insights into each other’s experiences as service users and providers, respectively, using a narrative, participatory action research methodology. These insights lead to areas of agreed-upon service improvement priorities that can have sustained impact on design, quality, and safety through partnership and shared leadership. Quality Time was a research study that investigated whether experience-based co-design could effectively capture service experience in Emergency Departments (EDs) in the United Kingdom (UK). Researchers undertook this study in response to a mandate to address one of the quality indicators (service experience) outlined by the UK Department of Health and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. The study’s primary aim was to establish whether EBCD could be employed to assess and redesign the service experience for patients and staff in UK Emergency Departments. One specific output from the Quality Time study was to prioritise improving staff experience—this priority was in direct response to patient sand carers hearing the staff experience. The Quality Time study demonstrates that EBCD is an effective method to hear the staff voice.