Step 1 - defining a care or support journey
A ‘care/support journey’ is rarely linear and always unique, so for the person giving feedback this could start well before an episode of care or support and continue on well after they leave the service. For that reason, the care or support team must first define the scope of the journey they wish to gather feedback about. Initially, this could be a small part of the service or care/support journey or it could be the whole journey. It could equally focus on a particular intervention, activity or process, such as therapy treatments, medicines rounds, meal times, support planning, self-directed support, home visits, outpatients appointment and so on.
Defining a care or support journey in advance can offer a team enough structure to frame their discovery conversations so that they can maintain a broad level of consistency with everyone they speak to.
Once a care or support journey has been selected then it is important to define the start and endpoints of the journey. This should be based on how the person giving feedback would understand these rather than how the service would describe them. For example, a person’s start point for a GP visit or social care inquiry might begin with them navigating an automated phone line to make their appointment, whereas the service’s start point may only focus on receiving the call to request an appointment.
Once the start and endpoints have been defined, key consecutive steps in the journey, between the start and endpoints, are identified. These are specific and easily identifiable points in the care or support journey where the person touches or connects with the service, people or environments. These are points perceptible to the person receiving care or support rather than the behind the scenes steps only seen by those working in the service, so the person will be able to see, hear or feel these during their journey. This guide will refer to these points as ‘touchpoints’ from this point onward.
It can be helpful to step through how and where a person might experience these touchpoints as they go through the care or support journey that has been selected. Pulling these points of contact or connections out will help to define the journey you want to understand with feedback, see Figure 5 for an example of this.
It is important to remember that you are identifying how the person using the service connects and interacts with it, rather than including any backroom steps that the person wouldn’t recognise, see, feel or hear.
Example touchpoints - going into hospital
Example journey steps for a visit to the GP
(touchpoints shown in green)
- Phoning the GP for an appointment
- Arriving at the GP surgery
- Booking in with the receptionist
- Sitting in the waiting room
- Consultation with the GP
- Transferred to the treatment room
- Treated by the Practice Nurse
- Leaving the GP Surgery
Once the touchpoints have been identified, these can then be used to generate a linear pathway (figure 6) by mapping them in chronological order. This helps to visualise and frame the journey you will hold care experience discovery conversations about. This can also be given to the person offering feedback to act as a visual aid to focus them on sharing their experiences across the care or support journey and help them to include each of the touchpoints.
Example of linear pathway mapping of GP visit journey
This first step is intended to give you a very broad outline of the care or support journey to help you to undertake step 2. Try not to get caught up in too much detail and complexity; keep it as simple as possible and focussed on the way the person that uses the service or process will experience it, not on what you do to provide it.