A Systematic Review of the Impact of Patient and Public Involvement on Service Users, Researchers and Communities

When done well, community-academic partnerships can have enormous benefit to the community members involved, to academic researchers and to the research itself.

“When done well, community–academic partnerships can have enormous benefit – to the community members involved, to academic researchers and to the research itself (Brett et al., 2014; Jagosh et al., 2012, 2015).”

When done less well, community-academic partnerships can be ineffective and burdensome, especially when involvement is tokenistic, which can even cause harm.

“When done less well, however, partnerships can be ineffective and burdensome. This is especially the case when involvement is tokenistic in nature (Staley, 2009), which can even cause harm (Brett et al., 2014).”

The quality of reporting of patient and public involvement in research papers is often inconsistent and partial, with little information about context, process, and impact.

“While the patient and public involvement (PPI) evidence base has expanded over the past decade, the quality of reporting within papers is often inconsistent, limiting our understanding of how it works, in what context, for whom, and why.”

Inadequate reporting of PPI creates problems for systematic reviews that attempt to synthesise PPI evidence.

“Inadequate reporting can create problems for systematic reviews that attempt to synthesise PPI evidence [2–4].”

The original GRIPP checklist's development drew on systematic review evidence, without broader input from the international PPI research community.

“While the original GRIPP checklist represented an important starting point in creating high quality PPI reporting, its development drew on systematic review evidence, without broader input from the international PPI research community [2–4].”

It is not possible to be prescriptive about the exact content of each GRIPP2 item because the current evidence base is not advanced enough.

“While GRIPP2-LF and GRIPP2-SF aim to guide consistent reporting, it is not possible to be prescriptive about the exact content of each item, as the current evidence base is not advanced enough to make this possible [2–4, 21].”

The success of PPI in this study may relate to several factors, including patient partners' prior training, researchers' experience, and good relationships.

“The success of the PPI in this study may relate to several factors. Firstly, the patient partners had received training around research methods in previous studies and were actively involved in a patient and public involvement group attached to the University of Warwick Medical School. Furthermore, the researchers were experienced at involving patient partners in their research [22]. Finally, good”