Developing the People's Experience Survey (PES): a mixed-methods study updating a patient-reported experience measure (PREM) for use in any healthcare setting across Wales.

OBJECTIVES: To develop and validate a bilingual experience survey for use in any NHS healthcare setting, to support service improvement. DESIGN: A prospective mixed-methods study. SETTING: Any healthcare setting in NHS Wales including primary, secondary, urgent and planned care. PARTICIPANTS: An opportunistic sample of people with experience of using local healthcare services. Qualitative interviews and focus groups were held to develop a draft survey. These were followed by online data collection from a wide participant sample for statistical validation. The tool was translated and linguistically validated following recognised methods. Patient engagement leads were involved to ensure the tool met their needs. RESULTS: We conducted and analysed five focus groups and four interviews, consisting of 33 people in total. 12 draft questions were developed related to key aspects of patient experience. A series of online surveys were conducted to test the draft questions, with 769 responses received. Data were analysed to assess completion rates, intra-rater reliability, internal consistency and convergent validity. One question had both sub-par intrarater reliability and poor convergent validity, and despite attempts to improve the wording, it failed to meet minimum requirements of validity and was subsequently removed. The final validated People's Experience Survey (PES) was subsequently translated into Welsh and validated with service users. CONCLUSIONS: The PES is a reliable and valid tool, suitable for use in any healthcare setting. The robust processes that have been undertaken ensure that the questions included are available bilingually to collect reliable, meaningful data to support service improvement work.