Author Archives: Katie Saunders

How can we use patient experience surveys to improve care?

By Katie Saunders | Published: October 20, 2014

One new answer, for cancer patients, comes from our analysis of the National Cancer Patient Experience Survey, published this week in the European Journal of Cancer Care We found strong inequalities in experience between patients with different cancer diagnoses, and these were pretty consistent across the whole patient journey, from pre-diagnosis care to post hospital …read more

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How do people with diabetes describe their experiences in primary care?

By Katie Saunders | Published: October 6, 2014

Well, actually quite good news here. People with diabetes in England report primary care experiences that are at least as good as those without diabetes for most domains of care. This is one of our conclusions from our analysis of responses to the English national GP Patient Survey from 85,760 patients with self-reported diabetes. However, …read more

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Asking the right questions

By Katie Saunders | Published: September 10, 2014

One of the great things about Twitter is that you get to read other peoples’ takes on things. Matthew Hankins, for example, posts people’s interpretations of p-values (under the hashtag #stillnotsignificant), which are more entertaining than you might think. A few weeks ago he posted the conclusion from a paper which read: “we were quite …read more

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What do patient experience, genome-wide association studies and randomised controlled trials have in common? A blog about p-values

By Katie Saunders | Published: April 3, 2014

As far as I understand, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been a very successful approach to looking at huge numbers of possible associations of genes with different medical problems. The approach is broadly “hypothesis free” without specific prior reasons to think that any single genetic change out of the millions considered might be associated. This …read more

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Online surveys and my data

By Katie Saunders | Published: March 24, 2014

So, I started doing online polls for money because Suzanna at the BHRU said that this was how she recruited her study participants. For those of you interested it doesn’t pay very well. I have been filling in polls for about 6 months now and have still not yet reached the threshold where they actually …read more

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What I read on the internet (Part V): prescribing information

By Katie Saunders | Published: February 10, 2014

Not as many links to Mumsnet this time, but just in case of interest here are some places where prescribing information or data sets for individuals, GP practices or countries can be found. INDIVIDUALS Prescribing for individuals can be purchased from commercial primary care data bases (expensive ++): QResearch http://www.qresearch.org/SitePages/Home.aspx Thin http://www.ucl.ac.uk/pcph/research-groups-themes/thin-pub/database CPRD http://www.cprd.com/intro.asp The …read more

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What I have been reading on the internet (Part IV)

By Katie Saunders | Published: January 6, 2014

So this week I have been reading the internet (and, for any of my bosses reading this, please note also working). I liked Nigel Praities (@nigelpraities) in Pulse yesterday who highlighted the news about a proposal that the NHS ring fenced budget be removed, that female doctors are considered a burden to the NHS and …read more

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What I read on the internet (Part III)

By Katie Saunders | Published: October 10, 2013

Having managed to mention Mumsnet in CCHSR blogs here, here, and here, and given the signs of the remarkable force of online campaigns by the pro e-cigarette lobby which we find in the BMJ this week, I am inclined to speculate that these campaigns appear to have arrived on Mumsnet too  with a remarkably pro …read more

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Big data

By Katie Saunders | Published: September 16, 2013

With big data arriving on the scene for health care, we can take a slightly smaller look at some of data on health service performance that is increasingly being made public in the UK. What does it mean for me as a patient? Well it means that there are now lots of websites where you …read more

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What I read on the internet (Part II)

By Katie Saunders | Published: June 10, 2013

Following on from Jenni Burt’s blogs here and here about the process of reviewing and revising papers, a couple of my favourite teaching links on the topic are this one on “How not to annoy the statistical referee” and this one about the process of post-publication errors in the BMJ. At work (when not idly …read more

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  • The Cambridge Centre for Health Services Research (CCHSR) is a thriving collaboration between the University of Cambridge and RAND Europe. We aim to inform health policy and practice by conducting research and evaluation studies of organisation and delivery of healthcare, including safety, effectiveness, efficiency and patient experience.