A small-scale investigation of hospital experiences among people with a learning disability on Merseyside: speaking with patients and their carers.

Accessible summary We did twelve interviews all about the times people with learning disabilities had been to hospital since March 2007. Some of them were with people with learning disabilities and some of them were with the carers of people with learning disabilities., This article talks about what people told us in the interviews and makes some recommendations to hospital staff which we think would help improve hospital experiences for people with learning disabilities in the future., This research should be important to people with learning disabilities because people with learning disabilities often have more need to attend hospital than other people, and so it is important that the care they receive is of a good enough standard when they are there., Summary People with a learning disability face a number of challenges when seeking access to hospital care which are often distinct from those faced by the general population. Numerous statistics indicative of these challenges are represented in the academic literature. Previous research has suggested several reasons for the continued existence of these challenges, including a lack of expertise in the provision of health care to people with learning disabilities and negative attitudes towards this population held by healthcare professionals. As a means of elucidating the hospital experiences of people with learning disabilities on Merseyside, the researcher conducted 13 semi-structured interviews - an analysis of 12 of which are included in this article. Of these 12 interviews, two were conducted with an unaccompanied person with a learning disability, three were conducted with a person with a learning disability alongside their carer, and seven were conducted with the carer or carers of a person with a learning disability. The topics discussed in these semi-structured interviews were determined by the findings of a literature search and pilot interview. Emergent themes within the interview transcripts are discussed and recommendations made for healthcare professionals engaged in the hospital care of people with learning disabilities. It is concluded that people with learning disabilities on Merseyside continue to contest with the same difficulties during hospital experiences as have been identified previously by numerous national and international investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]