General Practitioners’ Concerns About Online Patient Feedback: Findings From a Descriptive Exploratory Qualitative Study in England

Patel, Salma; Cain, Rebecca; Neailey, Kevin; Hooberman, Lucy

doi:10.2196/jmir.4989

Cited by 43 publications

(75 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…We identified five key themes in these comments: anonymity of comments, inability to respond without breaching confidentiality, representativeness, moderation of feedback and type of platform. In line with previous work in both the UK and elsewhere, [12][13][14] our analysis supports the hypothesis that doctors feel wary of online patient feedback, perceive its content to be largely negative, question whether it represents the patient population and thus whether it should drive service changes. Recent work indicates that doctors' views on the representativeness of online feedback may be justifiable.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Exploring UK doctors’ attitudes towards online patient feedback: Thematic analysis of survey data

et al. 2020

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Introduction: Patients are increasingly using online platforms to give feedback about their health-care experiences. Online feedback has been proposed as a way to drive transformative change in the health service through informing choice and improving quality. Attitudes held by health-care professionals influence the uptake of new technologies. Understanding these attitudes is essential in exploring the potential of online patient feedback as a standard feedback mechanism. This study explores the content of free-text comments left by doctors responding to a survey with the aim of understanding their attitudes towards online feedback. Methods:A cross-sectional online questionnaire was completed by 1001 UK primary and secondary-care doctors. Doctors were given the opportunity to leave a free-text comment about online patient feedback. Doctors' attitudes towards online patient feedback were identified and explored using thematic analysis. Descriptive statistics and chi-square tests were used to examine demographic differences between those doctors who left a comment and those who did not.Results: Thematic analysis identified five key interrelated themes: anonymity, confidentiality, representativeness, moderation/regulation of online feedback and platform type. The characteristics of those leaving a comment very closely matched those of the entire survey sample.Conclusion: Across the comments, the most prominent finding was a general scepticism and caution towards online feedback, with most of the key themes relating to the perceived limitations and challenges. Further work exploring ways of addressing and verifying online comments without breaching confidentiality could provide valuable information to health systems seeking to drive improvement through patient online feedback.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Exploring UK doctors’ attitudes towards online patient feedback: Thematic analysis of survey data

et al. 2020

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“…[8][9][10][11][12][13] Increasingly, the internet is being harnessed alongside the plethora of more traditional tools, such as paper based questionnaires, to gather patient experience data. 14 Online methods of collating patient feedback have distinctive features when compared to traditional forms, including the breaking of geographical barriers, providing the opportunity for honest, real-time and transparent dialogue, and possibly encouraging more patients to provide their feedback. 11 Despite few healthcare professionals asking patients to report their feedback online, some patients are doing so and many are reading online feedback from others.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How do healthcare staff respond to patient experience feedback online? A typology of responses published on Care Opinion

Ramsey¹,

Sheard²,

Professor³

et al. 2019

Patient Experience Journal

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Patients are increasingly describing their healthcare experiences publicly online. This has been facilitated by digital technology, a growing focus on transparency in healthcare and the emergence of a feedback culture in many sectors. Due to this area being previously unexplored, the objective of this study was to identify a typology of responses that healthcare staff provide on Care Opinion (www.careopinion.org.uk), a not-for-profit online platform on which patients are able to provide narrative feedback about health and social care in the UK. Framework analysis was used to qualitatively analyse a purposive sample of 486 stories regarding hospital care, and their 475 responses. Five response types were identified: non-responses, generic responses, appreciative responses, offline responses and transparent, conversational responses. The key factors that varied between these response types included the extent to which responses were specific and personal to the patient story, how much responders' embraced the transparent nature of public online discussion and whether or not responders suggested that the feedback had led to learning or impacted subsequent care delivery. Staff provide varying responses to feedback from patients online, with the response types provided being likely to have strong organisational influences. The findings offer valuable insight, advancing the relatively unexplored research area. They also have both practical and theoretical implications for those looking to enable meaningful conversations between patients and staff to help inform improvement. Future research should focus on the relationship between response type, organisational culture and the ways in which feedback is used in practice.

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“…This study builds on the existing literature on physician authority and the doctor-patient relationship by considering the effects of reviews on physician authority through mediating components of reputation and expertise. Research has shown both physicians' general wariness of reviews (Patel et al, 2015;Mueller et al, 2013) and the reflexive, thoughtful potential of reviews (Adams, 2011). This article analyzes reviews and surgeons' reactions to them together, showing how even surgeons who receive positive reviews fear their potential threat to their reputations.…”

Section: Medical Consumerism and Cosmetic Surgerymentioning

confidence: 99%

Do online reviews diminish physician authority? The case of cosmetic surgery in the U.S.

Menon

2017

Social Science & Medicine

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This article analyzes the substance and perception of online physician reviews, which are qualitative and quantitative assessments of physicians written and shared by patients, in the case of U.S. cosmetic surgery. Like other cash-pay medical specialties, cosmetic surgery is elective and paid for largely out of pocket, with patients having latitude in their choice of surgeon. Drawing on qualitative data from interviews, observations of an American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery professional meeting, and online reviews from the platforms RealSelf and Yelp, I identify two interdependent contributors to physician authority: reputation and expertise. I argue that surgeons see reviews overwhelmingly as a threat to their reputation, even as actual review content often positively reinforces physician expertise and enhances physician reputation. I show that most online reviews linked to interview participants are positive, according considerable deference to surgeons. Reviews add patients' embodied and consumer expertise as a circumscribed supplement to surgeons' technical expertise. Moreover, reviews change the doctor-patient relationship by putting it on display for a larger audience of prospective patients, enabling patients and review platforms to affect physician reputation. Surgeons report changing how they practice to establish and maintain their reputations. This research demonstrates how physician authority in medical consumerist contexts is a product of reputation as well as expertise. Consumerism changes the doctor-patient relationship and makes surgeons feel diminished authority by dint of their reputational vulnerability to online reviews.

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General Practitioners’ Concerns About Online Patient Feedback: Findings From a Descriptive Exploratory Qualitative Study in England

Cited by 43 publications

References 60 publications

Exploring UK doctors’ attitudes towards online patient feedback: Thematic analysis of survey data

Exploring UK doctors’ attitudes towards online patient feedback: Thematic analysis of survey data

How do healthcare staff respond to patient experience feedback online? A typology of responses published on Care Opinion

Do online reviews diminish physician authority? The case of cosmetic surgery in the U.S.

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