Waiting Times: Speaking of Waiting
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Waiting Times: Speaking of Waiting
IRAS ID
237112
Contact name
Michael J Flexer
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Exeter
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 3 months, 30 days
Research summary
This research is part of the multi-strand, Wellcome-funded Waiting Times project, a collaboration between University of Exeter and Birkbeck, University of London. The research project as a whole explores different facets of waiting and time in relation to healthcare, illness and well-being.
This ethics application relates to a strand of fieldwork being conducted by Dr Michael J Flexer, the publicly engaged research fellow on the Waiting Times project. The overarching objective of the research strand is to generate and archive stories of waiting.
Experiences of waiting and of different and disturbed temporalities are characteristic of accessing healthcare and suffering ill health. Waiting has long been an important proxy for the quality (and sustainability) of the NHS, and is a an indicative barometer of service-user 'satisfaction'. At the same time, too little qualitative and critical work has been done on the actual lived experience(s) of waiting. This strand of research looks to engage service-users in a range of NHS clinical settings and co-create different story-telling methods to generate texts for the archive and for critical analysis in a humanities monograph on the temporalities of waiting and health.
All the research will be conducted by Dr Flexer and will involve partner NHS clinics: three GP clinics (in London, rural Devon and Bristol); a respiratory outpatient clinic. Dr Flexer will also be recruiting outside the NHS, though social media, voluntary sector organisations and the HE institutions themselves.
Aside from the respiratory outpatient clinic, no one will be recruited on the basis of any diagnosis or illness. The field research will run until April 2022, when the Waiting Times project ends. Over the course of the three years, Dr Flexer hopes to recruit approximately 200 people into the study.
REC name
West Midlands - Coventry & Warwickshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/WM/0023
Date of REC Opinion
27 Mar 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion