So you’re new to… patient and public involvement

Ten things to consider to make sure you’re doing PPI right

Patient and Public Involvement has been around for some years now. Demonstrating a plan for it—or some version of it—on application forms has become a necessity for most health and social care funding, including at the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

PPI is essentially about ensuring patients and the public are actively involved in your research; research is carried out with them, not on or for them. They are neither participants nor ‘subjects’. For example, they could be co-applicants, members of a project steering group or comment on ethics materials.