Understanding Lived Experience of Health, Illness and Healthcare

This research cluster aims to build on an existing body of work to examine the lived experience of patients and practitioners, including students, of health, illness and healthcare. Every patient and every healthcare worker, whether qualified or in training, operates within a context of which healthcare is but a part. It is a context with historical, socio-cultural, and cross-cultural aspects and influences. It provides the baggage, both positive and negative, that influences, or perhaps even determines, how patients react emotionally and psychologically to both illness and wellness, how healthcare workers respond to patients, their needs, their adverse events, and how they respond to and treat each other.

Current research areas include:

• Patient-reported experience/outcome measures.
• Patient-practitioner communication.
• Patient understanding of and reaction to health-promotion campaigns.
• Professionalism.
• Perceptions of preparedness for practice of newly qualified staff.
• Patient experience of wellness and illness.
• Practitioner experience of wellness and illness – both their own and that of their patients.
• Experience of health inequalities and discrimination in healthcare

Cluster Lead: Dr David Matheson

Email: d.matheson@wlv.ac.uk