Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Nov 20, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Dec 3, 2018 - Jan 28, 2019
Date Accepted: Sep 26, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
A smartphone app designed to empower patients to contribute towards safer surgical care: a community-based evaluation using a participatory approach
ABSTRACT
Background:
Background:
MySurgery is a smartphone app designed to increase patient/carer involvement in behaviours that contribute towards safety in surgical care.
Objective:
Objectives: We present a pilot evaluation of MySurgery in which we evaluate surgical patients’ perceptions of the app and how it might be implemented into surgical pathways in the UK National Health Service (NHS).
Methods:
Methods:
A Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach was used to formulate a research steering group consisting of 5 public representatives and 4 researchers with equal decision-making input. Surgical patients were recruited from the community using multiple approaches, including online (e.g. social media, recruitment websites, charitable/voluntary organisations) and face-to-face (via community centres). Participants referred to MySurgery before, during and after their surgery and provided feedback via an embedded questionnaire and using reflective notes.
Results:
Results:
A diverse mix of 42 patients took part with good representation from two ‘seldom heard’ groups: those with a disability and those from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic group. Most were very supportive of MySurgery, particularly those with previous experience of surgery and those who felt comfortable to be involved in conversations and decisions around their care in general. The app showed particular potential to empower patients to become involved in their care conversations and safety-related behaviours. Perceptions did not differ according to age, ethnicity or length of hospital stay. Suggestions for improving the app included how to make it more accessible to certain groups e.g. those with a disability.
Conclusions:
Conclusion: MySurgery is a novel technology-driven approach to empowering patients to play a role in improving surgical safety that seems feasible for use within the NHS. Adopting a PAR approach and the use of a diversity strategy considerably enhanced the research process in terms of gaining diverse participant recruitment and PPI. Further testing with stakeholder groups will follow.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.