Background
NHS England has rolled out online access to test results for patients via the NHS App. Viewing test results online may improve patient engagement and satisfaction. It could also lead to patient anxiety and could mean more patients contact their GP practices to discuss results. Making sure patients can understand their blood results online could therefore have an important impact on primary care workload.
Patients need to know what to do next when they receive a test result; if this is not communicated well then patients could come to harm. It is important to make sure that all patients can understand their test result, and that no groups are disadvantaged by the move to online test result communication.
Aim
The aim of this study is to develop tools and guidance to help patients with a wide range of needs to access and understand their online blood test results.
What we will do
We will use the ‘person-based approach’ to co-produce these tools and guidance through:
- Recruiting a diverse group of patients and carers who will be involved in this co-production throughout all the stages of the research.
- Interviewing patients from GP practices and primary care staff to see how blood test results can be made more accessible, the findings will feed into the co-production.
- Running a series of co-production workshops with patients and carers from different communities as well as healthcare professionals to develop template tools for online blood test result communication.
- Testing the template tools through surveys with a wide range of people and using their feedback to improve the tools.
We will share our tools and guidance with stakeholders including the NHS App team.
Contact
If you would like to find out more about the Accessible Results Study please contact us by email at accessible-results-study@bristol.ac.uk
This study is funded by the NIHR HSDR (Award ID: NIHR159467). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.