Opinion piece Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Patient Experience Research Centre

The PPI Café – Open for Ideas

17 May 2018

At the 2018 Imperial Festival we opened the Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Café for the first time. A new PPI methodology – a hybrid between a science café and a more typical PPI workshop – it was designed by five Imperial research centres in partnership with Patient and Public members.

Our aim was simple: to give the public a flavour of PPI by contributing to real-life research projects. As well as getting fresh public input into some projects, we wanted to try something novel in PPI and to have some fun.

Why a café?

Despite their modern association with tax-dodging and precarious labour, coffee houses have for centuries been associated with free discussion and the exchange of ideas.

Calls open for 2018 Engage Conference

Will Kendall

14 May 2018

Calls are now open for contributions to the 2018 Engage Conference. We hear from Nathan Green and Denise Sime who presented at last year’s conference. They discuss their experience of sharing their learnings on LoL-Lab, a co-created comedy event between Imperial researchers and the public. If you would like to apply to be part of this year’s conference, get in touch with us at ppi@imperial.ac.uk for support with an application.

What is the Engage conference?

Nathan: The National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) annual conference, Engage 2017, was held over two days in December in Bristol. We saw presenting at this workshop as a fantastic opportunity to share lessons from our own public engagement experience.

Completing the Feedback Loop: how to improve your Patient and Public Involvement.

Will Kendall

9 May 2018

Elspeth Mathie discusses her recent study on the importance of giving feedback to the public in PPI.

Are members of the public wasting their time?

It is widely accepted that Patient and Public Involvement is beneficial for health research. However, imagine spending time giving your opinion and never getting any feedback. Some members of the public ask “am I wasting my time”? Many PPI contributors (lay members, service users, patients, members of the public) say that they contribute to the design of research studies but do not hear if their comments get to the researcher, are useful or make any difference to the research.

What can an engineering PhD student learn from PPI?

Will Kendall

2 May 2018

Biomedical Engineer Shruti Turner reflects on the recent CRISH (Co-creating Innovative Solutions in Health) course and explains that engineers could learn a lot from PPI.

Using social media to engage the public in your research

Will Kendall

5 April 2018

In this guest blog, Imperial‘s Cathy Thomas offers advice on how to use social media to engage (and involve!) the public in your research. What have your experiences with using social media for engagement been? Share your experiences in the comments.

Why bother with social media?

There are over one billion active users on Facebook and over 100 million monthly Instagram users – which means that if you’re looking to connect with members of the public, it’s worth considering how social media and other digital tools could support or enhance your engagement activity.

The useful thing about social media is that it’s a discursive medium that encourages sharing and participation, so rather than simply using it as a tool to promote what you’re doing, there will be ways in which it can support two-way engagement.