Understanding the Patient Experience: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

The patient experience is now globally recognized as an independent dimension of health-care quality. However, although patients, providers, health-care managers, and policy-makers agree on its importance, there is no standardized definition of the patient experience. A clear understanding of the basic concepts that make up the foundation of the patient experience is more important than a statement defining the patient experience. The fundamental nature of health care involves people taking care of other people in unique times of distress. Thus, the human experience is at the very core of understanding what the patient experience is. This article reviews a framework of the basic human experience of patients as they progress from being unique, healthy individuals to a state of experiencing both disease and health-care services. This novel framework naturally leads to a basic understanding of the patient experience as a human experience of health-care services.

Keywords: health-care services quality; human experience; patient experience; patient satisfaction; patient’s perception of care; quality of care.

Figure 1.

A conceptual framework for understanding the patient experience. The arrows indicate the direction patients take in their journey through health-care encounters, which is hypothetically to the right of the diagram. The person moves across the continuum, indicating that the patient or user of health-care services is the same unique human being they have always been. The arrow labeled “Patient” begins in the middle, indicating the person is not always a patient and becomes one with the onset of disease. The “User” arrow indicates that the person who has a disease only becomes a user of health-care services with their first interaction with the health-care system.