About us

The Patient Experience Research Centre provides support, advice, education and training to a variety of organisations and individuals.

Support and advice

We offer the following advice and support for researchers and clinical teams:

• Qualitative research methods
• Public involvement for research funding applications and projects
• Policies for public involvement including payment, confidentiality, etc.
• Involving patients and staff in co-design projects
• Focus groups
• Analysis of patient surveys and comments

Contact us about involving patients in your research at: publicinvolvement@imperial.ac.uk.

Education and training

• Short courses and workshops on public involvement for laboratory and clinical researchers.
• Lectures and practical sessions about qualitative and mixed methods research for undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses

Research project supervision

• BSc
• MRes
• MSc/MPH
• PhD

Contact us about research projects supervision at: patientexperience@imperial.ac.uk or h.ward@imperial.ac.uk.

We welcome collaborations with a wide range of groups and individuals. Please see below for a list of current and past collaborators. If you would like to get in touch about working with us, please contact patientexperience@imperial.ac.uk

Cancer Research UK Imperial Centre (Archived on 8 January 2024 - S Thomas)

The Centre brings together scientists working across different areas of biomedical research to find innovative new ways to tackle cancer. The Cancer Research UK Imperial Centre integrates core biological cancer expertise with surgical technology, imaging, engineering, chemistry, computing and physics to evaluate new technologies.

NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Northwest London (ARC NWL)

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration Northwest London (ARC NWL) was established in July 2019 to support applied health and care research that responds to, and meets, the needs of local populations and local health and care systems. The ARC NWL's broad research priorities are:

1. Child population health
2. Multimorbidity and mental health
3. Digital health
4. Innovation and evaluation
5. Information and intelligence
6. Patient, public, community engagement and involvement
7. Collaborative learning and capacity building

Helix Centre

HELIX is a design team embedded in St Mary's hospital, set up by Royal College of Art and Imperial College to solve unsolved medical problems. We have worked with the HELIX team in developing a care map that helps breast cancer patients at the point of diagnosis to understand and navigate the care they receive.

Imperial College Health Partners (ICHP)

Imperial College Health Partners is a partnership organisation bringing together NHS providers of healthcare services, clinical commissioning groups and leading universities across North West London.

Nursing Directorate, Imperial Healthcare NHS Trust

The Nursing Directorate at Imperial is responsible for developing a strategic approach to ensuring people have a positive experience of care and treatment and that people are cared for in a safe environment. In partnership with the directorate, we worked on a nurse handover project aimed at improving the handover process for both nurses and patients.

NIHR North West London Patient Safety Research Collaboration (PSRC)

The NIHR North West London Patient Safety Research Collaboration (PSRC) takes advances in basic research with potential relevance to patient safety into an applied research setting. Combining a range of research disciplines from the NHS and universities, they undertake research to drive forward improvements in patient safety and safety of NHS services in hospitals and GP surgeries. This research has the potential to translate into real benefits for patients, such as reducing prescription errors, improving diagnosis of cancer and rare diseases and reducing accidents during surgery.

UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) 

We collaborated with the National HIV Reporting team at UKHSA (then Public Health England) on the Positive Voices survey for HIV patients. As part of this collaboration, we facilitated the involvement of patient groups, such as Positively UK, in the design and analysis of research questions that provided data of use to their service users. 

Royal College of Psychiatrists

The Royal College of Psychiatrists is the professional body responsible for education and training, and setting and raising standards in psychiatry. We were commissioned by the Royal College of Psychiatrists to design a questionnaire for dementia carers to help determine the quality of care that their charges are receiving.