Understanding patient and public involvement in health services research: From theoretical framework to practical workshop

2014 Conference

Abstract: Gibson et al. (2012) recently developed a theoretical framework for understanding and planning patient and public involvement in health services research. This presentation will discuss the process by which researchers worked collaboratively with three patient and public involvement groups to turn this theory into a practical workshop. In these workshops, individual group members were asked to think about and rate where they thought their group sat along each of four dimensions described in the theoretical framework:

1. Does the group have a strong or a weak voice within its organisation?
2. Do the group members feel that the organisation is listening to the concerns of the public group or do the concerns of the organisation dominate?
3. Are there many or only a few ways to be involved?
4. How likely is it that the organisation will change in response to public involvement?

Participants were also invited to post comments, both positive and negative, to support their ratings.

This poster will also share findings from these workshops, showing how ratings from individual participants can be combined into a visual representation of ‘patterns’ of involvement within a single group, across different groups, or across a range of activities within an organisation. We will discuss how these diagrams can be used as a starting point for conversations about understanding a group’s position within an organisation, what factors might be supporting, or presenting barriers to, public involvement and how these discussions can be used to plan future involvement.

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