Audit and evaluation of a psychosexual counselling service identifying areas for development from a user-focused perspective

Abstract

Clinical audit data has been collected since 1996 from an established National Health Service Nurse-led Psychosexual Counselling Service. An analysis of year-on-year data began to show that increasing numbers of clients were not actively “opting-in” to the service following referral and this became a cause for concern. In order to explore the reason for the increase in non-engagement with the service, a client feedback questionnaire was developed and sent within two weeks to all discharged clients over a twelve-month period. Once the user views coupled with general clinic audit data were analysed, the cause of increasing rates of non-engagement with the service appeared to be linked with increased waiting list times. Further benefit arose from the client feedback data analysis providing evidence from which it was possible to create a number of simple low-cost service developments. Finally, the client feedback data also became a source of affirmation in relation to this complex area of clinical practice – showing 71% of survey returns found the engagement with psychosexual counselling gave them “change for the better” or “great change for the better”.