Testing the find a patient journey
We’re close to releasing our minimal viable service into beta with hospital hubs.
To understand if the ‘find a patient’ user journey continues to meet user needs, we prototyped and ran research sessions with 6 hospital hub participants.
Searching by a patient’s NHS number
Users recognised this was the most direct way of finding patients if they had an NHS number.
Searching the Patient Demographic Service (PDS)
For beta, users will have restricted access when searching for a patient using PDS. This means they will get a single result and must enter accurate data into all required fields.
Following testing, users highlighted having to correctly spell the patient’s name and postcode as problematic.
We recognise healthcare workers need a more flexible and advanced search. This will be available to users once we introduce the NHS Care Identity Service 2. Our earlier ‘find a patient’ designs reflect how this will work.
Some users did not recognise the term PDS. Instead, they used words like ‘demographics’ or ‘searching the spine’ for patient demographic information and understood that all fields needed to be entered to get a result. We will iterate the content to make it accessible for everyone and reflect their language.
Searching records saved in RAVS
Users did not immediately understand that ‘records’ are vaccination records saved within RAVS. Several described ‘local records’ as a more meaningful and clearer term.
Once users grasped the meaning, they recognised the ‘records’ section featured in the left-hand navigation could also be used to search for records.
How users search
During testing, we learnt that the way the search is displayed from left to right correctly reflects the order in which users search using the 3 different methods.
Creating a new patient record
Most users expect to create a new patient record if they cannot find a patient following an extensive search.
Usability score and summary
Overall, users scored the find a patient journey 6.5 out of 7 (very confident), finding it intuitive and straightforward.