Thematic Review

More Dynamic, More Insightful, Less Costly Routes To Getting Big Answers

There are increasing calls for the NHS to use more thematic review analytical approaches in understanding issues such as patient safety, clinical outcomes and patient feedback. The new Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) encourages organisations to undertake thematic review using inductive or deductive approaches: the SEIPS (Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety). Whilst PSIRF offers some guidance on the desired outcomes from thematic review, there is little in the way of an actual formula or process for organisations to follow.

Thematic review (or thematic analysis) is, strictly speaking, a scientific discipline which requires certain conditions to be in place to enable accurate (and useful) end-user insights. In a similar vein to evaluative techniques, the approaches to quantitative and qualitative data in thematic review are important to combine without introducing:

• Bias and persuasion, such as relying on a pre-agreed set of “themes” uninformed by the actual data
• Inaccurate, unvalidated or unreliable source data, such as poor-quality care records
• Gaps where useful information is excluded or not considered
• Loose or tenuous connections between evidence and outcomes

Starting Your Thematic Review Journey

When designing any thematic review process you should:

• Develop a thematic review standard operating process as part of your Patient Safety Plan
• Be clear whether the review you are doing needs ethics approval, the application of duty of candour or patient/family involvement
• Use researchers (internal or external) who are not conflicted and have little or no investment in the result, just that the method used is sound and free from bias.

About The Niche Mixed Method Approaches

Niche offers several different packages to support organisations in thematic review. Our methods have been developed over many years by: undertaking some of the largest evaluations in the country; as well as undertaking several hundred serious and high-profile healthcare-related investigations. All of this is combined with sophisticated analytical techniques which provide fast and cost-effective ways of rapidly summarising large volumes of documents and text, lending themselves to both the inductive (where there is no prior theory or hypothesis as to the themes) and deductive (trying to validate or prove an existing theory) approaches. Our support packages include:

Building An Effective Thematic Review

The iterative process of building a thematic review. Start with the end in sight and stay vigilant to subtleties:

Written by Niche Health and Social Care Consulting