By Maia Johnstone, with contributions from Reshma Naik and Lara Vaz, MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator

Imagine you’re visiting a health center for an appointment. You receive a warm greeting and are brought to a private space by a provider of your choice after only a short wait. You’re not worried that anyone will overhear your conversation. As you share your health concerns, the provider listens carefully and is genuinely curious and attentive. They communicate clearly about your options and what will happen next, and you feel comfortable asking questions and voicing your opinions and values. The services are free, or are at a low cost that you can afford, and as you leave the health center, you are at ease, equipped with information about when you need to return and the follow-up reminder you’ll receive before that visit.

Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, this scenario isn’t always how patients experience health care. In fact, in many instances, the reverse is true—people leave a health center feeling unheard, disrespected, and unmotivated to seek care in the future.^1,2 The patient’s experience is an important component of quality of care, and when it is improved, the likelihood of desired health outcomes also increases.²

Patient, or client, experience consists of the various factors and interactions that contribute to how a person perceives the care they receive and how they feel about it.³ As we saw in the scenario at the start of this blog, a patient’s experience may relate to how respected and emotionally supported they feel, and how clearly and kindly health care staff communicate with them.

Attention to experience of care addresses the quality of clinical health services, as well as the patient’s overall well-being.¹ It’s worth noting that while patient often refers to the person receiving health services, in some contexts, like childhood vaccination, it refers to the caregiver’s or accompanying person’s experience.

Those working in global health may use related terms like people-centered care, respectful maternity care, nurturing care, rights-based care, or service experience. A graphic on people-centered care, consultatively developed by MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership, helps illustrate how some of these terms overlap and intersect. While the graphic can help clarify differences in terminology, its core message is that any effort to improve the quality of health services—as part of program design, guideline development, or training—should prioritize how patients experience those services.

Patients’ experiences are inherently important and can play a substantial role in influencing future care-seeking and adherence to treatment, which can ultimately lead to better health outcomes.¹ (See Figure 1.) Imagine a scenario where a pregnant woman’s concerns are not listened to and addressed during an antenatal care appointment. She then delays or even misses her next appointment because she doesn’t feel motivated to return. This negative encounter could affect her future decisions to deliver at a health facility, get her newborn vaccinated or seek health services at the facility if her child becomes ill.

Patients deserve to not only receive care, but to feel good about the experience.

Attention to patients’ experience of care is relatively well established in the family planning and maternal and newborn health communities. Now, increasing focus is being given to the patient’s experience within sub-specialties such as emergency obstetric care, other technical areas such as immunization and, more broadly, child health.

MOMENTUM is working across varied contexts and topics to better understand and improve patients’ experience of care throughout their life course—through research, adaptations in measurement, and support for program and health systems improvements. Some specific areas of focus include addressing provider bias through human-centered design, engaging communities in the design, implementation, and monitoring of services, helping improve the measurement and monitoring of patient experience of care, and helping shape global and national guidance.

As a report on respectful care by MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator notes, community-based social accountability approaches that bring health providers and community members together for dialogue have the potential to improve the experiences of both patients and providers by empowering patients and communities to claim their right to quality health care services. These approaches may also empower providers to advocate for what they need to provide quality services and better problem-solving with patients on improvements to how care is provided and received.⁴

If this blog has piqued your interest in patient experience of care, be sure to check out the rest of the series, which highlights examples of MOMENTUM’s work to improve experience of care and identify what’s still needed to advance high-quality care globally. The series may be useful to those working on similar topics in similar contexts and who are interested in applying MOMENTUM’s insights, reflections, and helpful resources.

Photo caption: Elizabeth waits to vaccinate her child at the Munigi Health Center in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Photo Credit: Crystal Stafford, Corus International