How to gather patient feedback and insights from patient focus groups.

Patient focus groups are a powerful tool for healthcare professionals and practices seeking to take their patient engagement to the next level and improve patient experiences. Focus groups are interactive sessions that allow patients to share their perspectives, preferences, and feedback directly with healthcare providers. Running a patient focus group requires a little planning, facilitation and an open mind, but this far outweighed by the deeper, valuable insights into the lived experiences, motivations and behaviours of your patients you will capture.

In this blog, we will walk you through the 10 steps we use when running successful patient focus groups, enabling you to gather meaningful feedback and make data-driven improvements to your healthcare services. (Hint: read all the way to the bottom for our 5 winning tips for success)!

10 Steps to running an effective patient focus group:

Step 1: Define the Purpose and Objectives

Begin by clearly defining your purpose and objectives for running the focus group. Identify the specific topics or areas you wish to explore, such as patient satisfaction, communication with your practice or team or the overall healthcare experience. You might also just want to focus on one particular care delivery service you provide or a particular stage of your patient's care journey if you are looking to drill into a deeper level of understanding. To ensure this isn't a one-off, also make sure the focus group's purpose and objectives align with your practice's broader patient experience (PX) improvement initiatives.

Step 2: Recruit Diverse Participants & Compensate their Time

Diversity is key to gaining a well-rounded understanding of patients' perspectives. Contact patients from various demographics, age groups and healthcare experiences. Consider grouping patients with like medical conditions to learn more about their specific needs or diverse conditions if your objectives are broader. Ensure you have representation from different cultural backgrounds to ensure a comprehensive representation. Also, consider including carers, family and/or patient support people for a well-rounded group and different perspectives.

It's good practice to compensate patients for the time they give. See the further reading links at the end of this blog to access some guidelines around asking and compensating patients to participate.

Step 3: Choose the Right Setting

Select a comfortable and neutral setting for the focus group. Consider conducting the session in a quiet, private space to promote open and honest dialogue. Provide light refreshments to create a relaxed atmosphere.

Running focus groups virtually is also a good option if your participants have good digital literacy and you think it will make it more accessible for participants to take part. 

Step 4: Plan and Practice Facilitation

Professional facilitators are great, but hearing your patients with your own ears can be very valuable. If you find it hard to be unbiased, empathetic and capable of encouraging participants to express their thoughts openly while also hearing feedback about you, your team and your practice, find a facilitator and observe. If the patients participating are known to you, consider whether a different facilitator might allow them to feel more comfortable to give open and honest feedback. Either way, prepare a discussion guide with open-ended questions to steer the conversation and ensure all relevant topics are covered. Remember, this is the consumers' session, so creating a trusting, collaborative environment will make them comfortable speaking up without fear. 

Step 5: Set Ways of Working Upfront

Establish ground rules at the beginning of the session to ensure respectful and constructive discussions. Encourage active listening, avoid interrupting others and reassure participants that their opinions are valued and will be kept confidential.

When facilitating a group discussion or brainstorming session to gather multiple opinions, consider ways for people to provide their thoughts so they are not limited by access, ability, language and mobility.

Step 6: Engage in Active Listening

During the focus group, actively listen to participants' feedback and take detailed notes. You might like to consider having another observer in the room to record these notes so you can focus on facilitation and listening. Avoid leading the discussion, expressing personal opinions or defending your practice and procedures. Let participants drive the conversation while gently steering them back to the defined topics when necessary.

Step 7: Encourage Deeper Insights

Encourage participants to share their experiences, stories and suggestions openly. Use probing questions like, "Can you tell me more about that?" or "How did that make you feel?") to delve deeper into their responses and gain a deeper understanding of their perspectives and feelings around their experiences.

Step 8: Record and Analyse Data, Produce Insights

Record the focus group session where possible (with participants' consent of course) or take comprehensive notes. Transcribe the data and analyse the responses to identify recurring themes and insights. These findings will serve as valuable input for future patient-driven initiatives.

Step 9: Provide Feedback and Acknowledgement

It sounds obvious, but don't forget to thank your participants. As mentioned above, it's best practice to pay consumers for their involvement in focus groups and there are guidelines for this (see below). After the focus group, share a summary of the key insights with the participants to acknowledge their contributions. Explain how you plan to use their feedback to improve patient care and experiences. Reinforce how valuable their involvement was.

Step 10: Implement Improvements

Use the data and insights from the focus group to inform your PX improvement plans. The insights may support activities like improving existing or designing new care pathways, developing patient journey maps or co-designing patient education or support tools and materials. Share the insights with your team and celebrate the positives. Make data-driven decisions and implement changes based on the feedback received, demonstrating your commitment to a patient-partnership approach to care.

Our top 5 tips for running a successful focus group:

Running a patient focus group is a rewarding and insightful experience that supports improvements to adopting a partnering-with-patients approach. They offer a depth of insight and feedback directly from patients that can't be found in other quantitative tools like surveys or feedback forms. By carefully planning your focus group, engaging diverse participants and actively listening to their feedback, you can better understand patient needs and preferences. The session insights and the tips for success will empower you to make informed iterations and improvements to your PX, ultimately creating a more human-centred healthcare environment that prioritises patient outcomes and well-being.

Further Learning:

Ready to learn more about engaging with your patients and discover how your practice can evolve to be more PX-driven? Take our introductory Fundamentals of PX course online now. 

Further Reading: (click to view each item)

Partnering with Consumers: A guide for consumers - Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care

National Health Council Principles for Compensating Patients for Patient Engagement Activities