Turk Amadea, Fleming Joanna, Powell John, Atherton Helen
Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, UK.
Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, UK.
Digit Health. 2020 Mar 5;6:2055207620908148. doi: 10.1177/2055207620908148. eCollection 2020 Jan-Dec.
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.
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.
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.
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.
患者越来越多地使用在线平台来反馈他们的医疗保健经历。在线反馈被认为是一种通过提供信息以助选择和提高质量来推动医疗服务变革的方式。医疗保健专业人员的态度会影响新技术的采用。了解这些态度对于探索在线患者反馈作为一种标准反馈机制的潜力至关重要。本研究旨在通过了解医生对在线调查的自由文本评论内容，来探究他们对在线反馈的态度。
1001名英国初级和二级医疗保健医生完成了一项横断面在线问卷。医生们有机会就在线患者反馈留下自由文本评论。通过主题分析来确定和探究医生对在线患者反馈的态度。使用描述性统计和卡方检验来检查留下评论的医生与未留下评论的医生之间的人口统计学差异。
主题分析确定了五个关键的相互关联主题：匿名性、保密性、代表性、在线反馈的审核/监管以及平台类型。留下评论的医生的特征与整个调查样本的特征非常匹配。
在所有评论中，最突出的发现是对在线反馈普遍持怀疑和谨慎态度，大多数关键主题都与感知到的局限性和挑战有关。进一步探索在不违反保密性的情况下处理和核实在线评论的方法的工作，可为寻求通过患者在线反馈推动改进的卫生系统提供有价值的信息。
