Thousands of patients and nurses are to be quizzed about what they think of the state of the NHS in Stirling and Tayside.
Over two years Stirling and Dundee Universities will research the delivery of frontline healthcare and examine the experience of patients.
This will involve questioning around 6,000 patients and 1,000 nurses and other health professionals. Many of them will be from Tayside.
Professor Brian Williams, the director of the nursing research unit at Stirling, said: “There have been a number of major initiatives in recent years designed to help frontline healthcare staff improve the care experience.
“Our study aims to evaluate whether these initiatives are working for nurses and patients and, importantly, what can be done by the NHS to support staff in improving the care experience.”
The project will be launched today in Tayside, the first health board area to take part.
Hospital patients on 30 surgical and medical wards will be asked to fill out a questionnaire during their stay, then a follow-up questionnaire one month later.
Questions will cover issues such as standards of care, ward environment, pain control and well-being.
The study will also ask nurses about their own well-being, their perceptions of the standard of care on wards and whether they think their working culture supports good caring.
Professor Martyn Jones of Dundee University will lead the NHS Tayside arm of the study.
He said: “To help health professionals to deliver good quality care we need to understand how the care climate in each ward affects staff well-being and care provision.
“This study will capture patient and staff experiences of the effect of these initiatives and identify what works best.”
A national in-patient survey published in 2011 found 85% of those questioned believed the overall quality of care they received in hospital to be excellent or good, with 87% giving those ratings to the staff they came across.