Involving patients in researching the management of back pain in primary care

2008 Conference

An example of patient involvement at various levels in a large research project and support provided to encourage useful patient involvement.

Summary

Back pain is a common but difficult condition to treat, both for individual patients and healthcare professionals in primary care. The current project was set up to collaboratively learn about how back pain can be managed better using quality improvement principles. Nine GP practices have been recruited that will attend a series of workshops and meet in their practice teams to identify barriers to managing back pain and come up with small changes that address these barriers.

Patients and representatives of patient groups have been involved at various levels of this project:

• A representative of a national patient organisation was involved in writing the project proposal and grant application.
• A patient and a representative of a national patient organisation are members of the steering group.
• Each GP practice has included a patient representative in their practice team.

This presentation will focus on what support the steering group has put in place for individual practice team to enable them to involve patients in their project. Furthermore it will report on an introductory meeting for all patient representatives before the first workshop and feedback from patient on the first workshops. Such feedback has been useful in exploring the difficulties that some practice teams had in recruiting patient representatives.

Point for discussion

In this project support was provided for patient representatives and the wider practice teams to stimulate useful patient involvement. The question is why some practices had no difficulties in recruiting and involving patients, while other teams had much more difficulties in this. Was the support inadequate? Or does this reflect the fact that characteristics of useful patient involvement range widely and a more individualised approach is necessary?

Learning outcome

• Learn from an example of patient involvement at various levels of a large research project in primary care.
• Identify what support is needed to enable others to include patients in their project teams.
• Explore some of the difficulties and concerns in recruiting patient representatives.

Authors

Cooper ~ Carole

Patient representative - On behalf of the LIMBIC (Learning to Improve the Management of Back Pain in the Community), steering group. Carole Cooper is a patient representative in the LIMBIC project and is able to use her personal experiences of back pain in steering the direction of this project. Dries and Carole, together with other members of the steering group, are providing support and information on patient involvement to GP practises that participate in the LIMBIC project.

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Hettinga ~ Dries

Research and Information Manager, BackCarelnbrDries Hettinga works for the charity BackCare, a national charity that provides support and information for people and organisations affected by back pain. He represents BackCare in the 'LIMBIC project'

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