Scottish Cancer Patient Experience Survey 2018: national report

2. Introduction and Background

The Scottish Cancer Patient Experience Survey (SCPES) is a national postal survey jointly funded by the Scottish Government and Macmillan Cancer Support. It is run in partnership with Information Services Division (ISD), part of NHS National Services Scotland. The survey asks people about their experiences of cancer care, from thinking that something might be wrong with them to the support they received after diagnosis and treatment.

The focus of this report is on the national results of the survey. This is the second iteration of this survey, with the first run in 2015. Comparisons have been made with the 2015 survey results where this is possible.

Results at Regional Cancer Network, NHS Board and Cancer Centre level are available via an online dashboard at: www.gov.scot/CancerSurvey.

Scottish Care Experience Survey Programme

The Scottish Cancer Patient Experience Survey is one of a suite of national surveys which are part of the Scottish Care Experience Survey Programme. The surveys aim to provide local and national information on the quality of health and care services from the perspective of those using them. They allow local health and care providers to compare with other areas of Scotland and to track progress in improving the experiences of people using their services.

Information about the other national care experience surveys is available at www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Health/careexperience.

The survey programme supports the three quality ambitions of the 2020 Vision^[1] – Safe, Effective, Person-centred – by providing a basis for the measurement of quality as experienced by service users across Scotland. In particular the surveys support the person-centred quality ambition which is focused on ensuring that care is responsive to people’s individual preferences, needs and values. More information about the context for this survey is provided in Chapter 3 of this report.

Aims of the Survey

The survey’s specific objectives were:

For local improvement

• provide Cancer Centres with feedback on the experiences of their patients, relative to previous surveys and other areas in Scotland;
• provide NHS Boards with information on experience in their respective board areas and on variation within and between boards;
• provide Regional Cancer Networks with information on experience in their respective network areas and on variation within and between networks.

National results

• providing national results for the survey, identifying variation within and between local areas and if and how the level of positive and negative experiences have changed over time;
• highlight areas of best practice and areas for improvement;
• explore the variations in the experiences of different groups of patients.

Survey Methods

The survey was designed to provide results for each of the five main Cancer Centres, as well as information for use by NHS Boards and Regional Cancer Networks.

Individuals aged 16 or over, who had an inpatient hospital record with a mention of cancer between 1 January and 30 September 2017, and a confirmed cancer diagnosis date between 1 July 2016 and 31 March 2017 on the Scottish Cancer Registry were sampled for the survey. A full list of exclusions from the sample is provided in the survey’s Technical Report.

In total, 8,090 surveys were sent to eligible respondents and 5,001 were returned completed, giving an overall response rate of 62 per cent.

Throughout this report, with the exception of the data in Chapter 4, analysis is presented as weighted percentages. Weighting the results in this way provides results which are more representative of the sample population as a whole. Weighting was introduced as part of the 2018 survey – a paper summarising the reasons for this and the weighting methodology that has been applied is available at www2.gov.scot/Resource/0054/00542173.pdf.

Results from the 2015 survey have been backdated where appropriate to ensure comparability over time. All changes over time that are discussed in the report are statistically significant at the five per cent level.

More information about the survey design, response rates and methodology can be found in the Technical Report available at: http://www.gov.scot/ISBN/9781787817807