Making sense of urgent care: how and why do people use health services?

Abstract

Urgent care typically describes healthcare for non-life threatening conditions requiring prompt attention (‘same day’ or within 24 hours). In England, urgent care services have proliferated partly to divert people from attending overcrowded emergency departments but also to address policy concerns of patient choice and improved access to care.
This wider choice of services has led to a complex landscape of urgent and emergency care where boundaries between different services are blurred. Service users are often confused about which service to use. This includes using emergency care for ‘non-emergency’ health problems. Research around this topic has often focused on the ‘inappropriate’ use of emergency services. However, categorisations of ‘appropriate’ or ‘inappropriate’ behaviours are simplistic.
This Evidence Brief describes the findings of a two-year study undertaken by the University of Southampton and NHS collaborators at University Hospitals Southampton and South Central Ambulance Service. This research examined the amount and nature of effort (‘work’) service users undertake to make sense of urgent care and seek help from health services.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Joanne Turnbull: orcid.org/0000-0002-5006-4438

ORCID for Christina Saville: orcid.org/0000-0001-7718-5689

Catalogue record

Export record