How patient involvement groups are influencing research

Congratulations to Mr Oliver Boughton (Clinical Research Fellow and Specialist Registrar in Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery) who won the prize for patient and public involvement in research at the Imperial Clinical Academic Trainees Annual Research Symposium earlier this month, after he co-founded the Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) Research Group in the MSk Lab with Matthew Ryan.

The PPI research group works with members of the public with pre-operative and post-operative orthopaedic conditions, to help shape the future of orthopaedic research into more effective methods of surgery and care. The first PPI group took place in July 2016 and since then there have been two further meetings.

Mr Oliver Boughton speaks further on the importance of involving patients with his research:

The involvement helps our lab by focussing our research on that which benefits patients, either directly through improving surgical techniques and devices, or indirectly by researching the science behind how bones behave under loading and how our joints move.

Patients have very much enjoyed being shown the lab and the research going on and have asked us great questions. This led to one patient asking an important question that has not been answered yet sufficiently in the literature and I am currently writing a systematic review to answer this question and am inviting the patient to be a co-author on the paper.

Find out more about the Patient Involvement Group on the MSk Lab website.

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