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Measuring impact of involvement
We asked researchers what they thought about trying to measure the impact of involvement. This covered three main areas: what people knew about the current...
We discussed with researchers what skills they felt they needed to work effectively with patients and members of the public. Ceri and Eric summarised many of the skills identified by their colleagues as: ‘ability to listen, courtesy, humanity, open-mindedness, communication and person skills, a little bit of caring nature’ and a ‘willingness to translate, to take what people say and think, ‘Actually how would this be useful?”
It is perhaps obvious to say that researchers need good communication skills, importantly including the ability to listen as well as explain things in accessible language, but as Rebecca noted, such skills don’t always come easily or naturally, and extra training may help. (See ‘Training needs for involvement‘). Valerie suggested this was one good reason to have a professional PPI co-ordinator who can bring some of the facilitation skills and experience researchers may lack, and Bernadette recommended using external facilitators in some situations, who might ‘make things more equal’. At the same time, Sabi suggested researchers themselves are best placed to explain their research and can’t really delegate that to a coordinator. (It was evident that people designated as PPI leads or coordinators had very different roles and levels of seniority, some might be very hands-on while others fulfilled a more strategic role. See also ‘Organisational support and leadership for patient and public involvement‘.)
We asked researchers what they thought about trying to measure the impact of involvement. This covered three main areas: what people knew about the current...
There has been growing attention to the training needs of patients and members of the public who get involved in research, but less so to...