We’re the Imperial Patient Experience Research Centre team, otherwise known as PERC. And we’re dedicated to improving the quality and impact of healthcare and translational research by promoting and supporting active communication between patients, the public, researchers and clinical staff.
This blog is primarily aimed at Imperial’s biomedical researchers, but the content we cover may also be relevant and of interest to healthcare providers, researchers outside the biomedical field, researchers outside Imperial College and anyone with an interest in citizen engagement more generally.
In recent years, patient and public involvement (PPI) in research has been placed at the heart of health and care strategies throughout Europe. And with Imperial being at the forefront of biomedical and public health research both in the UK and abroad, the College wants to ensure we embed this culture throughout the whole organisation too. The ‘Involving and engaging the public’ leaflet from NIHR Imperial’s Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) outlines our overall patient and public involvement and public engagement strategy and showcases examples of involvement and engagement activities already carried out by research groups across the BRC and partners.
We know change doesn’t happen overnight though. Maybe this is the first time you’ve heard the term ‘public involvement’, or maybe you’ve known about it for some time but struggled to see its relevance to your work, what you’d gain or simply how you’d go about doing it alongside your other commitments.
We’ve updated our Patient Experience Research Centre web page with a new ‘PPI Resource Hub’ and ‘PPI Training‘ section. But we felt we also needed a more adaptive, informal platform too, which is why we’re starting this blog.
So, what can you expect? Over time we hope to share the latest learnings and news from the PPI community, points of views from the team on the advances and issues of public involvement, case studies of good involvement practice to inspire new ideas, and a whole host of other top tips and personal pointers. But you won’t just hear from us, we want to showcase your stories and experiences too. Many members of Imperial are already putting PPI into practice, and we want everyone to be able to take inspiration and learn from these examples, so that involving citizens will soon be a natural part of our research culture here at Imperial.
As we develop our blog plan, we’re keen to bring the stories and topics that are most relevant to you. If you’ve had any experience of involving patients or the public in your work that you’d like to share, or you have any thoughts, feelings or concerns about PPI that you’d like to see discussed, then please get in touch by emailing the team at ppi@imperial.ac.uk. We look forward to hearing from you.
Until the next post.
PERC