Exploring the collection, capture and use of patient reported outcome measures as part of routine care at Great Ormond Street Hospital from a staff perspective

At Great Ormond Street Hospital, staff will sit down in focus groups to talk about the forms they give to children and families—questionnaires that ask patients how they are feeling, called patient reported outcome measures (PROMs). The problem is that these questionnaires are collected inconsistently across the hospital, and it is not clear why. Some teams use the data to guide treatment decisions; others collect the forms but never look at them again. This study aims to uncover the specific barriers and facilitators that staff encounter when gathering and using this information—whether it is a lack of time, confusing software, or uncertainty about how the data can help. If the research succeeds, it could lead to practical changes in how PROMs are collected and used at GOSH and other children’s hospitals. That would mean more reliable data on how treatments affect children’s daily lives, which in turn could improve care planning, service design, and the way hospitals measure whether they are actually helping patients get better. The work is applied and focused on a single institution, but the lessons could inform NHS-wide efforts to make patient-reported data a routine part of paediatric care.