Why patients and the public want to get involved
PPI contributors in research say they are motivated by both personal and social reasons to get involved in health research.
These are some of the reasons people get involved:
- They want to make a positive difference to the quality of care or to improve treatments, either for themselves or for others with a similar condition. This is often motivated by personal experience of health and social care services, both positive and negative
- Some people have had difficult experiences and appreciate being able to do something positive with that experience
- People want to learn more about their condition and the research that is going on
- Others have had very good experiences and see their involvement as an opportunity to ‘give something back’
- People want to ensure the voices of their communities are represented in research
- People want to use their professional skills and experience to improve health research
- PPI contributors can benefit from increased confidence, knowledge, and skills
- They find the PPI work and research topics interesting
Researchers say that building PPI into their research:
- Strengthens the quality of their grant applications
- Improves the quality of their research
- Increases their understanding of how their research will benefit patients
- Contributes to their CV building
- Enhances their funder required feedback on research outcomes and impact
Find out more
Health Talk topics: The Healthtalk website has videos of researchers’ and patients’ experiences of patient and public involvement. These are a useful resource to find what researchers said about their reasons for involving people, the impact, some of the problems and how it can be better implemented and supported.