Supporting researchers to embed public and patient involvement in their research

While many researchers agree that public and patient involvement (PPI) in research is the ‘right’ thing to do, they can, at the same time, feel hesitant about including PPI in their work. This can be due to uncertainty about changing their research practices, fear of exposing their working practices to the outside world and risking tension in public relations. This tells us that researchers’ attitudes towards PPI may not always be entirely positive. This can lead to researchers undertaking tokenistic PPI or totally excluding PPI from their research.

Brief behaviour change interventions are theory-based interventions that equip people with tools to change their attitudes and explore uncertainty towards behaviour change. They can be delivered by anyone who is trained in the necessary skills and knowledge. They are delivered opportunistically and typically take 5-30 minutes or less. Brief behaviour change interventions have been shown to be very effective in supporting behaviour change related to health behaviours such as smoking, exercise and physical activity.

As part of a Master’s of Pharmacy Programme (MPharm), we have developed a brief behaviour change intervention which aims to support researchers to change their research behaviours to incorporate PPI meaningfully. The intervention is intended to be delivered by trained PPI champions to researchers during routine interactions. The purpose of this study is to assess the acceptability of the intervention to the PPI champions who will be trained in its delivery.

PPI contributors will be invited to attend an online meeting to help design training exercises for PPI champions in delivering the brief behaviour change intervention. This will involve creating scenarios, grounded in contributors’ experiences, that allow PPI champions to apply the skills and knowledge of behaviour change interventions. People with prior PPI experience and people without prior experience of PPI are both very welcome to apply as PPI contributors.