Current health policy, high-profile failures and increased media scrutiny have led to a significant focus on patient experience in Britain's National Health Service (NHS). Patient experience data is typically gathered through surveys of satisfaction. The study aimed to support a better understanding of the patient experience and patients' expression of it through consideration of the aspects of the patient experience on NHS wards which are by their nature impossible to capture through patient satisfaction surveys. Existential phenomenology was used to develop an in-depth exploratory narrative, expressed through the voices of the participants. Data collection involved in-depth face-to-face interviews with 12 purposively sampled participants, with analysis by means of hermeneutics. Though the individuality of each experience was apparent and cannot be overemphasised, common factors emerging from the data included uncertainty and unexpectedness, suffering and finitude, the futility of feedback and bureaucracy and absurdity. Overall, participants demonstrated how their individual personalities and expectations affected their response both to illness or injury and to their hospital admissions, highlighting feelings of vulnerability and voicelessness as a response to hospitalisation. The findings of this study provide useful insight into the patient experience on British hospital wards, and the value of an existential–phenomenological approach is demonstrated.

中文翻译：

---

无声和脆弱：21 世纪英国医院患者体验的存在主义现象学

当前的卫生政策、引人注目的失败和日益严格的媒体审查导致英国国家医疗服务体系 (NHS) 高度重视患者体验。患者体验数据通常通过满意度调查收集。该研究旨在通过考虑 NHS 病房患者体验的各个方面，支持更好地理解患者体验和患者的表达，而这些方面本质上是不可能通过患者满意度调查来捕获的。存在主义现象学被用来发展深入的探索性叙事，通过参与者的声音来表达。数据收集涉及对 12 名有意抽样的参与者进行深入的面对面访谈，并通过解释学进行分析。尽管每种经历的个性都很明显，怎么强调也不为过，但从数据中浮现出的共同因素包括不确定性和意外性、痛苦和有限性、反馈的无用性以及官僚主义和荒谬。总体而言，参与者展示了他们的个人性格和期望如何影响他们对疾病或受伤以及入院的反应，强调了作为对住院反应的脆弱感和无声感。这项研究的结果为了解英国医院病房的患者体验提供了有用的见解，并证明了存在主义现象学方法的价值。