Routes to Renewal in Outpatient Departments: A catalyst for change through autobiographical and transdisciplinary ethnography (REIMAGINING OUTPATIENTS PROJECT)

Mankee-Williams, Anna ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0829-8441, Heholt, Ruth ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 and Stevens, Kelly (2025) Routes to Renewal in Outpatient Departments: A catalyst for change through autobiographical and transdisciplinary ethnography (REIMAGINING OUTPATIENTS PROJECT). [Project] (Unpublished)

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Abstract / Summary

In reimagining we get closer to how things could and should be in the future’ (project participant)
Of all the voices in the NHS, the outpatient voice is arguably the least heard. By their very nature, outpatient experiences are transitory, temporary, and often disjointed. Those people journeying through outpatient services are returning to, reconnecting with and potentially reconceptualising their life world as they adapt to the interruption and disruption, sometimes lifesaving, sometimes life limiting medical experiences.
Building from a socioecological model of understanding health and wellbeing, utilising models more usual in art practice and cultural studies, the research team, working with the regional Public Patient Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) group and the regional NHS England outpatient transformation team, conceived a multidisciplinary project that combined multiple ways of seeing, hearing and feeling the experience of outpatient care, with the aim of enabling people to conceptualise and communicate in alternative ways. Using a three-phased approach; a mobile SMS survey, an autobiographical interview, and an ethnographic arts-based creative practice, we concluded that exploring diverse ways of listening to patients surfaces a profusion of lived experience that could benefit the patient, staff, alongside those that commission and provide services. Important points were raised that resonate with reimagining vital outpatients' services. The intention of this study is to begin to enable these voices to be heard in an alternative way, to demonstrate the value of arts-based participatory research within an NHS service space and inform a future set of recommendations for outpatient services.

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