Authentic PPIE – the (re)search for authentic engagement

Image: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/soft-pretzel-recipe-jurgen-krauss-b2397781.html

A Research Pretzel – or – when is Research not Research?

My goodness but I’ve been on a merry song-and-dance over the last 2-3 weeks?! In my last post where I explained about ethics in research, I explained that I needed to apply for ethical approval for my research, as I wanted to publish something about the project afterwards. That was all fine and good until I discovered that if I want to include NHS staff, I need to have approval from the HRA (Health Research Authority). This could take some time and in all likelihood I would run out of time to get any actual research done.

Gah!

So, instead, my manager suggested that I pivot slightly and change my project from ‘research’ to a Service Evaluation.

“What’s a Service Evaluation?” I hear you ask. Well, Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust has this succucint explanation:

Service Evaluation is defined as study in which research procedures are used in a systematic way to judge the quality or worth of a service or intervention, providing evidence that can be used to improve it.

Some of the important distinctions between research and a service evaluation are that a Service Evaluation (SE) is an internal piece of work, assessing a service provided through an NHS Trust and the findings aren’t generalisable because the context of the work is limited to that particular setting, and every NHS Trust is different.

This means that, as the governance for an SE is overseen by the Trust itself, as it’s an internal piece of work, I don’t need external approvals; although I will still need ethical approval if I want to publish anything afterwards…which I do.

So…more forms were filled in, more edits were made to the protocol (we’re now on version 6), participant information sheet and the consent form and it’s all been reviewed again by my wonderful Patient Research Ambassadors (volunteer public contributors) and my academic supervisor.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reassured by my academic supervisors today (I have two: Mel and Mari-Carmen, also known as MC) that I can at least organise the dates for the stakeholder discussions and let them know what I’m inviting them to, but I can’t actually confirm anything until I get the green light. Then it’s full steam ahead!!

I have also started work on the mini Scoping Review (from here on known as MSR).

“But wait a minute – what’s a Scoping Review, and why is yours a mini one?” Gosh, you are full of questions today! A scoping review, as kindly explained by Suzanne Mak and Aliki Thomas is:

A scoping review is useful to map the literature [academic papers] on evolving or emerging topics and to identify gaps. It may be a step before undertaking research or conducting another type of review, such as a systematic review.

Basically, I’m going to be looking at some academic papers to get a sense of what may have already been researched and what information is already out there about methodology for PPI in healthcare research. I have some criteria or categories I will use to help decide which papers I’m going to read, otherwise I will get swamped! There are some very large databases listing research papers, because there’s a lot of research going on in the world, so I need to search using some keywords – a bit like you do when you’re searching for something online – to filter out papers that aren’t relevent to me.

It’s going to be a mini scoping review because I don’t have time in this current project to do it as thoroughly as it would normally be done. But it will give me a chance to begin getting a sense of what’s out there on this theme and where the research gaps might be? MC, one of my supervisors, commented that it’ll end up being a hybrid scoping review because it will partly be with content searched on research databases and partly a ‘dirty search’ (which means typing keywords into Google Scholar and hoping for the best!) That term ‘dirty search’ did make me chuckle!!

So this is where I find myself. The Pretzel of Research has twisted back upon itself and now I’m doing research, although it’s not technically research, but also it is kind of researchy….I wonder what other baking analogies I could throw in here? Perhaps the Waffle of Research could illustrate a Systematic Review? (As the name suggests, it has a very clear, systematic step-by-step process you have to follow). Ooh! How about a Bagel of Research?! That could be Particiatory Action Research (an on-going cycle of Learn-Do-Review)…

Feel free to post a comment and add your suggestions for baking related research analogies!