Table 3.

Plausibility of patient experience surveys: limiting factors and potential foci for sensegiving dialogue

Factors inhibiting plausibility of interpretations favouring quality improvement		Foci for potential sensegiving dialogue
1. Views of patients	Not disinterested evaluators	Nature of doctors’ personal engagement with patients; psychometric bases of validity/reliability
	Incompetent evaluators	Nature of doctors’ personal engagement with patients; survey administration process; instructions given to patients on survey instruments
2. Views of surveys	Difficulties of interpreting feedback	Facilitated feedback for individual doctors/groups of doctors, embedded within wider local change programmes; additional information on feedback material (e.g. benchmarking data)
	Lack of contextual sensitivity	Potential for development/validation of tailored survey instruments for different care settings
	Anxiety regarding negative feedback	Nature of support provided to individual doctors concerned about negative feedback
	Risk of raising patient expectations	Potential to limit frequency of survey administration to minimum necessary, except where raising patient expectations is intended