An Examination of Patients’ Experiences with Navigation Services in Alberta’s Healthcare System
Date
2024-06-20
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Abstract
Background: The concept of patient navigation (PN) was first envisioned to assist marginalized cancer patients access appropriate and timely healthcare resources. While this understanding of PN may still hold for a subgroup of programs today, the expansion of PN over the past 30 years has resulted in a diverse set of interventions with distinct care settings, patient eligibility criteria, navigator training, and program objectives. Noting this, our study sought to better understand how PN has evolved by gathering information on patients’ perspectives and interactions with PN programs across Alberta. Our objectives were to (i) explore patients’ current experiences with PN programs, and (ii) identify the features of PN felt to be of particular value to patients. Methods: To address these objectives, we conducted an interpretive descriptive study to collate the experiences of adult patients with longitudinal exposure to Albertan PN programs (involvement for greater than or equal to one month). Participant recruitment occurred via key informant sampling with navigators across Alberta. One-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore patient experiences with PN and their understanding of it as a broader concept. Inductive thematic analysis and interpretive exercises were subsequently performed to construct a coherent message from the data. Continued collaboration with two patient partners was maintained throughout the study to ensure responsiveness to patient priorities. Results: This study involved 23 participants with experience using nurse navigators, transition navigators, and lay community health navigators. Irrespective of navigation type, the participants’ stories were tethered by their navigators’ promotion of seamless and personalized care, as well as their ability to seemingly humanize the healthcare system. This was accomplished through a set of participant-identified navigator characteristics, including approachability, accessibility, and comprehensive systems knowledge. While the identified functions and characteristics of navigators were consistent across participants, how these components were operationalized varied based on the program’s setting and the particular needs of each patient. Conclusion: As a patient-centred intervention, understanding patients’ experiences and valuations of PN is critical to distilling the essence of the intervention. This research directly addresses ongoing knowledge gaps surrounding contemporary understandings of PN, particularly from patients’ perspectives.
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Keywords
Patient navigation, patient experiences, health services research, patient-oriented research
Citation
Rabi, S. (2024). An examination of patients’ experiences with navigation services in Alberta’s healthcare system (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.