Looking at patients’ experiences of wet AMD treatment

Mr Martin McKibbin, Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust - £21,922

This project explored the experiences of people receiving treatment for wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and developed a questionnaire to help measure the quality of care they receive. The questionnaire, known as a patient-reported experience measure (PREM), could help identify where services are working well and where improvements are needed.

What was the problem?

The way people with wet AMD are cared for in the NHS could be improved, but changes to services need to be informed by the experiences and views of patients themselves.

PREMs can be used to assess different aspects of healthcare experiences, such as waiting times and the information people receive. This information can help healthcare providers, commissioners and others understand what is working well and make informed improvements to their services.

This project aimed to develop a PREM specifically to collect information about people’s experiences of wet AMD care across the UK.

What did the project achieve?

The project developed a PREM to collect information about experiences of wet AMD care across the UK. The team carried out semi-structured interviews with people with wet AMD to identify key themes, which were used to develop a draft questionnaire.

The questionnaire included questions such as whether people were given information about AMD and their treatment in a format they could understand, and whether information and signposting in the eye clinic was clear and accessible to people with sight impairment.

The PREM was then tested with volunteers, who provided feedback on its accessibility, wording and ease of completion. This feedback was used to inform subsequent versions of the questionnaire.

What's next?

The next phase of the research will be to send the PREM to 200–300 people with wet AMD to collect a wider range of experiences.

In the longer term, the aim is to build a picture of wet AMD care across the UK. This could provide benchmarks for comparing local services, highlight examples of good practice and help identify areas where changes could improve patients’ experiences of care.