Thinking thematically: top tips for completing a thematic review (NHS England, August 2022)

Summary

A thematic review can identify patterns in data to help answer questions, show links or identify issues. Thematic reviews typically use qualitative (e.g, open text survey responses, field sketches, incident reports and information sourced through conversations and interviews) rather than quantitative data to identify safety themes and issues. Thematic reviews can sometimes use a combination of qualitative data with quantitative data. Quantitative data may come from closed survey responses or audit, for example. These top tips support health and social care staff to carry out thematic reviews, but organisations may take different approaches, depending on the purpose and scope of their review.