Patient experience · No code
Take the patient’s route through your practice
Follow one common request from the patient’s first contact to the next step, and find where the route becomes confusing or harder than it needs to be.
What you’ll have at the end
A simple journey map and one practical change to test with patients and staff.
How to begin
- Pick one common situation, such as asking for help with a new problem. Keep the exercise focused on one kind of request.
- Map what the patient does, what the practice does and what happens next. Include online, phone and in-person routes where they are available.
- Ask a few patients and staff to walk through the map. Mark moments of waiting, repeated explanations, uncertainty or a handoff that relies on someone remembering.
- Choose one point to improve. Make the change small enough to test and ask the people affected whether it made the next step clearer.
- Write down what changed and what you learned. If the problem sits elsewhere in the pathway, take the map to the person who can help with that part.
What to measure
- Outcome: could people reach the next step with less uncertainty?
- Process: where patients have to repeat information or switch routes.
- Balancing: did the change shift extra work or delay to another person or team?
Before using real data
Do not record identifiable patient stories in an informal project document. Follow local guidance on patient involvement, consent and information handling.
Agree scope, data handling, supervision and escalation with your practice. Use approved systems. Do not upload patient information to this website or a public AI tool.