Input from patients on the design and execution of clinical research can provide a valuable perspective that healthcare professionals may not offer, a researcher told the annual Royal Pharmaceutical Society conference on 8 September 2014.
Bryony Dean Franklin, director of the Centre for Medication Safety and Service Quality, a joint research unit between Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and UCL School of Pharmacy, led a study to analyse inpatient medication prescribing and electronic systems solutions (IMPRESS).
She undertook the research after a discussion with a patient representative about why hospital patients believe they are not allowed to look at their drug charts.
Six lay members were involved in the design and collection of data for the study, she said, which enabled the researchers to get “two views of the same picture”.
During observations of patients and clinicians, lay members of the team tended to pick up on more general observations about the consultation, such as healthcare professionals having their back to the patient while discussing their medicine, she said.
Pharmacists picked up more technical medication-error observations.
Dean Franklin told delegates at the conference that pharmacy practice research needs collaboration from different disciplines and with patients.
