Patient-centred design of healthcare services: Meaningful events as basis for patient experiences of families

Patient experience has become a crucial part of the quality of any healthcare service. Experiences and their structures are not however trivial phenomena that are easy to describe and model. Instead, subjective and dynamic experiences seem to escape definitions and measurements. In order to map the dimensions and dynamics of patient experiences of families, i.e. experiences in families where one or more children are or have been seriously ill, we conducted in depth interviews with 17 parents. Both the interview structure and analysis were based on the technology as experience framework, which states that products and services are not just used but lived with. The results of our study describe patient experiences that are rich and complex yet structurally similar in their manifestations and development. Event-based and situational patient experience emerges through meaningful events relating to the patient's illness. The experiences evolve through new events as well as patient's reflections on past events and in the framing of the current situation. The presented situational patient experience model can be utilized to evaluate and design healthcare services.