The critical incident technique as a method to understand the impact of healthscapes on patient experience

This article aims to explore the critical incident technique as a useful method to understand the impact of healthscapes on patient experience. More specifically, we identify elements of the maternity healthscape that affect patient experience in a positive or negative way. In this respect, 39 in-depth interviews were conducted with various maternity stakeholders—mothers, midwives, heads of midwives, and senior managers. As the journey of (soon-to-be) mothers is technically and emotionally complex, and as many critical touchpoints must be managed care-fully to ensure a smooth experience, the key challenge during the interviews was to find a way to directly and indirectly discuss healthscape elements influencing the patient journey with the interviewees. Therefore, the authors explore the potential gains of the critical incident technique for architectural research.