Our tenth and final Tweetchat of 2018 discussed a research paper on patient and public involvement: Mapping the impact of patient and public involvement on health and social care research – a systematic review.
This chat was hosted by Katherine (@KathBroomfield) and Sai (@bangerasai), with Hazel (@HazelRoddam1) supporting and facilitating engagement. Click here to view the pre-chat overview and questions.
The Tweetchat was another fast and furious one with participants having the usual multitude of valuable observations, comments and experiences to share. Twenty-one participants were actively involved in the discussion about the benefits of PPI in research and service development.
The importance of GRIPP2 international standards for assessing the quality of a research paper was also discussed. The Tweetchat had 232 tweets posted in one hour with 235.828K impressions. You can find the full transcript here and Twitter statistics here.
One of the highlights of our Tweetchat was being joined first-time Tweeters and newbie Tweetchatters. Most people responded really well to all our questions, others preferred to ‘like and share’. It is great to see that ResNetSLT can be a safe and comfortable forum for people to explore and develop their Tweeting skills.
During the chat, an interesting theme emerged concerning the risks of ‘professionalising PPI collaborators’ and how this might impact their perspectives and contributions to research.
Our group of Tweeters felt that PPI groups in PhD studies ensured that participant information and consent forms, and interview topic guides were acceptable, echoing the benefits highlighted in the paper.
We also discussed how authentic PPI work is needed throughout the entire research process: generating questionnaires, collaboration in data collection and analysis, and sharing research findings in user-friendly ways.
It was fascinating to learn of the ways that some researchers engaged in collaborative PPI research work. Many also shared mechanisms for initiating PPI groups in data collection and analysis.
Several people mentioned that patient groups have been actively involved in current PhD projects. One tweeter highlighted that the RDS has a PPI fund of up to £500, which is advertised four times in a year.
In terms of the contextual factors that influence the impact of PPI on research: attitude, policy, funding, travel, and physical environment were all considered significant.
For those who might be interested in reading about the proceedings of the PCPI conference, where BMJ and mandatory reporting as measuring impact was debated, search for the hashtag #intppieval #intppieval18 on Twitter.
The GRIPP2, a standardised tool for assessing the quality of PPI research papers, was not familiar to many of our Tweeters but the idea of using the GRIPP2 short form to improve reporting was well received.
Once again, we had a really varied range of experiences shared during the chat and there is clearly a great deal of enthusiasm for engaging meaningful PPI in research with people who have communication difficulties.
The mechanisms for doing so, and for measuring the impact that PPI has on research, exist but are maybe not as widely used as they could or should be. Please see the links below for some resources and keep sharing anything new or exciting that you come across
Save the date in your diary for January 30th, 2019, (7.30pm) for the next Tweetchat where Hazel will discuss “Fostering implementation of health services research findings into practice: a consolidated framework for advancing implementation science”.
Listed below are some useful links on PPI:
“Researchers don’t know what they’re missing” — the impact of patient involvement in research.
Service user reflections on the impact of involvement in research.
Patient and public involvement in research.
#WhyWeDoResearch Campaign video.
NETSCC’s ppi framework and activity plan 2015-18.
Derek C Stewart: What does being ‘research active’ mean for clinicians and their patients?