By Tamanna Miah
I attended the Communications Strategy event on 30 May 2017, which brought together a combination of patients, carers, members of the public, healthcare professionals, researchers and PSTRC staff members who work in communications. We discussed a wide range of issues and had the opportunity to feed into a draft communications strategy for the NIHR Patient Safety Translational Research Centre.
by Sandra Jayacodi
As a servicer user who has been involved in research work and was a Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care Research Fellow (2016), I was privileged to be invited to be part of the NIHR Imperial Patient Safety Translational Research Centre‘s (NIHR Imperial PSTRC) Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) strategy working group.
The aim of the working group was to bring together researchers, healthcare professionals, patients, carers and public members to discuss and improve the draft PPIE strategy for the Centre. The event explored the practicalities of implementing the strategy and discussed how patient and public representatives could be supported in getting involved in research.
I was first properly introduced to the term “patient and public involvement and engagement” five and half years ago, working with research grant applications at Wellcome. I was one of the lucky people to be part of the first intake of their Graduate Development Programme, where I got to work in four departments for six months each. The organisation opened my eyes to how important it is to get the public interested in science and the vast possibilities of how to do so. At lunchtimes I had the luxury of going to lectures and exhibitions in the Wellcome Collection next door, which would always be bustling with curious members of the public. (more…)