AN INTERVIEW BASED APPROACH TO SEEKING USER VIEWS IN GENITOURINARY MEDICINE

Objectives: To assess user and potential user views on the appropriate ness, nature and quality of genitourinary medicine (GUM) provision in Bristol, UK and to develop a model for ongoing user consultation by GU M providers and purchasers. Design: This qualitative study was based o n semi-structured interviews with service users, potential users, comm unity informants and NHS professionals. Participants: 76 current, past or potential users, 10 community informants and 11 NHS professionals were interviewed. African-Caribbean women and men, homeless men and wo men, lesbians and gay men, men and women living with HIV and women wor king in the sex industry were recruited to maximise the diversity of t he sample. Results: The interviews demonstrated that participants comm ented positively on many aspects of the service available. The researc h also identified a number of areas where the service could be improve d. Many users emphasised their initial difficulty in finding out about the department and the need for greater publicity and outreach. Users reported coming to the clinic with high levels of anxiety and negativ e preconceptions about the GUM service. Specific issues were identifie d for different groups of users. There was a strongly expressed need f rom a number of women and African-Caribbean men for completely single sex clinics. Conclusions: The research identified a number of issues o f importance to service users that had not been identified in the depa rtment's own questionnaire surveys. The results support the premise th at qualitative interviews can be successfully employed to access a div erse sample of users, and can offer insights significantly beyond thos e available from structured patient questionnaires.