Service evaluation
Service Evaluations:
The following is taken from NRES Guidance and UH Bristol Operational
Guidance on research, audit and service evaluation. More
information is given in these documents.
- Aim to judge a service's effectiveness or efficiency through
systematic assessment of its aims, objectives, activities, outputs,
outcomes and costs
- Asks questions like - "has this service been a success?" or
"how satisfied are patients with the service being provided?"
- Are often specific to a department or clinical area within the
Trust
- Never involve allocating service users randomly to different
treatment groups
- May also be used to compare the effectiveness or efficiency of
a new practice/service (where supported by evidence) with an
existing one - however this would be for the purpose of local
comparison, i.e. not with a view to derive generalisable or
transferrable results (which would be research)
- Whilst benchmarking may be used to compare services, the
evaluation will not involve measurement against agreed standards
(which would be clinical audit)
- Generates evidence of effectiveness of a service which may lead
to service redesign
There is no service evaluation department at UH Bristol, and no
statistical or other advice available for such projects from
Research & Innovation. If you are a trainee or postgraduate,
then your supervisor should provide the necessary support.
If service evaluations are done as part of an audit or as
preparatory work for a grant application then advice may be
available. Contact:
Patient Involvement:
Service evaluations may involve input from patients at a number
of levels, e.g. patients may be asked to participate in surveys
which help to determine the effectiveness or efficiency of a
service; patients may be involved in the design of individual
projects or whole programmes of improvement activity. More
information is available from the Patient
Experience Team or contact Matthew.Areskog@uhbw.nhs.uk.
Focus Groups/Unstructured Interviews:
If you are conducting a focus group or unstructured interview as
part of a service evaluation or audit, you should contact Tony
Watkin (tony.watkin@uhbristol.nhs.uk or
call 0117 34 23729) who will be able to provide you with general
advice.