Use of design thinking to improve patient triage in primary care
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Use of design thinking to improve the quality of patient triage in primary care
IRAS ID
345817
Contact name
Suzanne Grant
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Dundee
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 2 days
Research summary
When a person contacts their doctor's surgery, they will usually explain their needs or symptoms to the staff there who will then use that information to decide who the person needs to see, how urgently they need to be seen, and where. This process of known as triage and the goal is to get people to see the right person at the right time at the right place. Most doctor's surgeries (or practices) have several options for their patients to contact them: face-to-face, over the phone, or increasingly via their website.
Previous research has found that some people experience difficulty getting access to the care they need because of factors like their age, where they live, and how much they earn, among other things. The digital divide, the gap between those who have reliable access to and can use digital technologies and those who don’t, has added additional barriers to access. These are known as socio-cultural determinants of health. Although we know the type of barriers that exist, there is limited research on what effect encountering multiple barriers to access has on people’s quality of care.
Research shows that quality improvement methods traditionally used in medicine have not been very good at solving complex social problems. This study will use methods from design that involve staff and patients as partners in the research process. Working with three different GP practices, ethnographic observations, interviews and design thinking techniques will be used to better understand the problem. Idea-generation techniques will be used to stimulate creative solutions to improve access to GP care. The results will also be used to better understand the effectiveness of design thinking as a quality improvement methodology.REC name
South Central - Oxford B Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
25/SC/0148
Date of REC Opinion
14 May 2025
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion