Primary care lived experience programme review 2022

The programme gave people the opportunity to contribute to the development of primary care services and what they would like to see change.

In 2021, the ALLIANCE was invited by the Scottish Government to develop a proposal focusing on capturing the voice of lived experience, which would in turn inform Primary Care recovery in the context of COVID-19. The programme was launched in September 2021 and ran until August 2022.

Over the duration the ALLIANCE undertook two pieces of public engagement, one asking people what their experiences have been accessing general practice services and the other one focusing on dental services. 

The activity relating to GP services consisted of an open access online survey. The survey was designed with specific aims:

• To capture what people were experiencing when accessing general practice services over the previous 12 months
• To have insight into effectiveness of public messaging
• To identify gaps or priorities for future public messaging campaigns
• To have insight into people’s understanding of the roles of general practice team members
• To have insight into overall satisfaction levels of accessing general practice services

285 people responded to this survey giving an overview of their experiences. Given these were based on the previous 12 months, they were heavily influenced by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This had a serious impact on how general practice services were able to provide care and support.

Our engagement told us that people’s understanding of the role of the general practice receptionist and their experience in dealing with them was varied. This went onto inform public messaging around the role of the receptionist, which aimed to increase understanding of the important role they have in ensuring that individuals receive the most appropriate and timely care. We are now seeing some practice teams changing the job title from Receptionist to Care Navigator which describes what they do much more accurately.

We also heard that the majority of people felt that their GP was always the best person for them to see. This showed the need to promote greater awareness of the important role of the wider multidisciplinary team within general practice services. These results laid the foundation for increased public messaging campaigns around the value of general practice multidisciplinary teams, to showcase the range of skills on offer to treat and care for individuals.

In spring 2022 our focus shifted to dental services. The objective was to capture people’s experiences of accessing dental care, to determine their understanding of the charging structure and of what treatments/services were available to them on the NHS and to identify what, if any, barriers people experienced in accessing these.  This would involve a survey and interviews.

The engagement consisted of an open accessed on-line survey and interviews with representatives from 2 organisations involved in the Oral health Community Fund project. Though there are limitations around the sample size and sampling techniques, there was a consistency in the overarching themes across both engagement activities.

Despite there being challenges and barriers to accessing dental services, our engagement also highlighted areas of good practice. 87% of survey participants stated they were satisfied with their treatment.

The ALLIANCE would like to thank those who contributed by sharing their experiences of accessing general practice and dental services and their views on what good care would look like.

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