Writing to Patients from Rheumatology / Patient survey

Patient survey

This study is about the letters rheumatology healthcare professionals write after an outpatient appointment. These are called clinic letters.

National guidance advises healthcare professionals to write clinic letters directly to patients, but not everyone does. Instead, some healthcare professionals write these letters to their patients’ GPs. A copy may also be sent to the patients.

We are carrying out this survey as part of a wider project. Our aim is to develop a set of resources to encourage and support rheumatology healthcare professionals to write directly to patients.

To help us do this, we need to know more about people’s experiences of receiving clinic letters (or not), and their views on these letters and who they are written to.

We are asking patients to complete our survey, which takes about 10-20 minutes to complete.

We want to hear from people who:

  • are currently a patient of an NHS/HSC rheumatology outpatient department in the UK
  • are aged 18 or over;
  • have attended two or more NHS/HSC rheumatology outpatient clinic appointments in the UK;
  • can speak English;
  • have capacity (the ability) to provide consent to take part.

Learn more

Take part

This interview and focus group study is now closed.

For more information patients visit our co-production workshop webpage.

Patient interview and focus group study