Recognition for Transforming Approaches to Public Engagement

Members of the Researcher Partners Group with Anna and other collaborators of the PPI café at Imperial Festival.

Pioneering work gains team a Highly Commended Award at the President’s Awards for Excellence in Societal Engagement.

The Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) Team, who form part of the NIHR Imperial Patient Safety Translational Research Centre (PSTRC), received the award for their pioneering work in revolutionising the PSTRC's societal engagement. 

The PPIE Team have transformed the approach to public engagement at the centre, using novel ideas to engage with new communities that have been highly acclaimed by members from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and the American National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. Anna Lawrence-Jones, PPIE Manager leading the PPIE team, tells us more about the groups' pioneering work.    

Bringing the public into research projects

The team established the Research Partners Group (RPG), a diverse group of patients, carers and public representatives, varying in age, ethnicity and healthcare experiences. Their role is to review all the PSTRC research projects and PPIE plans and to link the researchers with relevant patients/public groups to get involved in their projects. This group has helped to widen the number of people the centre is engaging with and the way the public are contributing to projects. One project about the acceptability of using social media and wearables to detect deterioration of mental health in young people will have three young people with experience of mental health as co-researchers. They had never worked in research before and have been trained to carry out interviews with their peers and analyse the data from those interviews.

As part of the drive to engage more widely with the public, the PSTRC team worked in collaboration with several other centres at Imperial to put on the PPI Café at Imperial Festival. Members of the public came to the “café” to discuss real research projects and give feedback on specific aspects, which researchers are currently integrating into their projects. Several external organisations are interested in this idea, so the PPIE Team and it’s collaborators are looking to roll out a toolkit for others to use this model of engagement.

Taking issues around medical error to the stage

A collaboration between Anna, Kirsten Dalrymple (Co-Director of Master’s in Surgical Education, MEd SE) and Steph Archer (Research Fellow) led to being awarded a Societal Engagement Seed Fund Project. Through this project, with support from the wider team (below), they hosted a free public performance of MEd SE alumnus David Alderson’s play “True Cut” at the Bush Theatre in Shepherd’s Bush. The play, about a young surgeon who makes a mistake during surgery, raises numerous issues around medical error, patient safety and training.  Led by a professional creative team, the performance was followed by an interactive discussion with the audience, facilitated by the playwright (David) and Professor Roger Kneebone and an informal panel of Imperial colleagues.

Central to preparing the public performance was working with community members from White City. Tapping into their knowledge shaped a number of decisions around the project, including how the event was advertised and to it ultimately being held in a ‘proper’ theatre space. The Bush Theatre performance opened doors to new invitations to perform the play, including the 2018 Imperial Festival and the recent Institute for Healthcare Improvement/British Medical Journal’s Quality and Safety Forum in Amsterdam, both of which received positive feedback from the audience and organisers and facilitated reaching out to new individuals, including internationals.

Imperial and external contributors: Anna Lawrence Jones (NIHR Imperial Patient Safety Translational Research Centre, PSTRC), Sheila Adam (External consultant for PSTRC), Steph Archer (PSTRC), Emily Barrow (PSTRC), Kirsten Dalrymple (Co-Director MEd SE, Surgery and Cancer), Bryony Dean Franklin (PSTRC), Nikita Rathod (Institute for Global Health Innovation), Angela Yu (PSTRC), Research Partners Group members, David Alderson (MEd SE alumnus and NHS surgeon from South Devon NHS Trust), panel members, project team and creative team of “True Cut” and PPI café Imperial collaborators: Patient Experience Research Centre, Clinical Research Facility, Clinical Trials Unit, Institute for Global Health Innovation and London In Vitro Diagnostics Co-operative and lay partners.