Patient Experience Expert (Remote Consultancy) – D-tree | 2026 Opportunity

A new remote consultancy opportunity has been advertised through an international development job board for a Patient Experience Expert (Caregiver Perspective and Care Navigation) with D-tree, a global digital health organization. The role focuses on improving how caregivers and children experience healthcare systems, particularly within a pediatric pneumonia intervention in Zanzibar.

This position highlights a growing global priority in health systems design: ensuring that healthcare is not only clinically effective but also accessible, respectful, and user-centered from the perspective of patients and caregivers.

About the Role

The Patient Experience Expert will lead human-centered design research focused on understanding how caregivers navigate healthcare systems for children suffering from pneumonia.

The goal is to improve:

• Caregiver experience of seeking and receiving care
• Communication between community health workers (CHWs) and facilities
• Continuity of care across multiple health system levels
• Trust in health providers and referral systems
• Overall satisfaction with pediatric care pathways

The work is part of D-tree’s broader intervention in Zanzibar aimed at strengthening digital and community-based health systems.

Core Objective of the Consultancy

The main purpose of the role is to generate insights that directly inform intervention design.

Key objectives include:

• Mapping caregiver and child experiences across the care journey
• Identifying barriers in accessing and completing care
• Designing improved communication and interaction models
• Supporting the development of caregiver-centered digital tools and workflows
• Ensuring care delivery is respectful, coordinated, and efficient

The expert will not build the final digital tools but will provide the research and design foundation for them.

Key Areas of Work

The consultancy is structured around four main areas:

1. Measurement of Patient Experience

The expert will define how caregiver experience should be measured in low- and middle-income country (LMIC) settings.

This includes:

• Identifying validated patient experience tools
• Defining key dimensions such as:
  • Trust in providers
  • Communication quality
  • Waiting times
  • Respectful treatment
  • Care continuity
• Reducing bias in caregiver responses
• Ensuring tools are suitable for primary care systems

A strong emphasis is placed on selecting frameworks that are both rigorous and practical for real-world health systems.

2. Understanding the Current Care Journey

A major component of the role is documenting how caregivers currently experience pediatric pneumonia care in Zanzibar.

This includes examining:

• Barriers to seeking timely care
• Experiences navigating referrals between CHWs and facilities
• Gaps in communication across different care providers
• Emotional and practical challenges during treatment journeys
• Levels of trust in community vs. facility health workers

The goal is to clearly identify “pain points” in the system that affect both health outcomes and caregiver satisfaction.

3. Designing Improved Care Experiences

Beyond analysis, the expert will help design better caregiver interactions across the care pathway.

This involves:

• Improving communication scripts used by CHWs
• Designing smoother referral experiences for families
• Strengthening facility-level communication and feedback
• Enhancing post-treatment follow-up processes
• Creating standardized yet flexible communication tools

The focus is on translating insights into practical design improvements that can be implemented within health systems.

4. Alignment with Evaluation Teams

The role also involves collaboration with evaluation specialists to ensure consistency between design and research.

Responsibilities include:

• Advising on appropriate evaluation tools
• Supporting qualitative research design
• Identifying key patient experience indicators
• Ensuring alignment between design insights and impact measurement
• Contributing to evaluation frameworks for health outcomes

This ensures that patient experience is integrated into broader health system evaluation, not treated as a secondary outcome.

Required Expertise

The ideal candidate is expected to have strong academic and field experience in health systems and qualitative research.

Key requirements include:

• Advanced degree in public health, anthropology, social science, or related field
• Experience conducting patient or caregiver experience research in LMICs
• Strong qualitative and mixed-methods research skills
• Familiarity with patient experience measurement tools
• Experience in maternal, neonatal, or child health programs (preferred)
• Experience in Zanzibar or similar contexts (preferred)
• Swahili language skills (required)

Timeframe and Workload

The consultancy is structured as a short-term engagement:

• Total duration: approximately 20 days
• Timeline: April to June 2026
• Fieldwork: 5–7 days in Zanzibar
• Remaining work: remote analysis, design, and reporting

Deliverables include measurement frameworks, caregiver journey analysis, design recommendations, and participation in working sessions with the project team.

Why This Role Matters

This position reflects a broader shift in global health systems: moving from provider-centered models to patient-centered care design.

Improving clinical outcomes alone is no longer enough. Health systems must also ensure that:

• Care is easy to navigate
• Communication is clear and respectful
• Patients trust the system
• Families feel supported throughout treatment journeys

By focusing on caregiver experience, this role contributes to more effective, equitable, and humane healthcare delivery systems.

Final Thoughts

The D-tree Patient Experience Expert role is a highly specialized opportunity for professionals in health research, anthropology, and human-centered design. It combines fieldwork, qualitative analysis, and systems thinking to improve how healthcare is delivered and experienced in real-world settings.

For professionals passionate about health equity, child health, and systems innovation, this consultancy offers a chance to directly influence how digital and community health systems are designed and implemented in low-resource contexts.

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Disclaimer: Remote Job Opportunities (RJO) is not the organization offering this opportunity. For any inquiries, please contact the responsible organization directly. Please do not send your applications to RJO, as we are unable to process them. Due to the high volume of  emails we receive daily, we may not be able to respond to all inquiries. Thank you for your understanding.