Patient Bridge Role, by Beccy Summers – Research Associate

Posted by ma403

27 August 2025

Patient and public involvement (PPI) in research is about researchers and patients/public members working together in equal partnership to do research. PPI in health research is critical because it ensures that the research we do is relevant to and benefits those most impacted by the research. PPI for large programmes of work involving multiple studies frequently relies on a single PPI group that oversees the entire programme. We believe that this ‘traditional’ approach can negatively contribute to the power imbalance between researchers and PPI members, since PPI members have a very wide remit and are unable to embed themselves fully in all aspects of the research.

At the application stage of a large cancer programme (NIHR201070) several years ago, we described our idea for a new approach to PPI – the Patient Bridge Role. We saw this approach as being able to support clear two-way communication between researchers and public members, and prevent any power imbalance developing between researchers and public members. When the programme was funded, it meant it was time for us to put our idea into practice!

We have now been taking the Patient Bridge approach within the programme for the last four years. It has not been without its challenges but through public members and researchers collaborating together we have been able to find ways to overcome these and enable more effective practice using the Patient Bridge approach in the future.

Our recent paper in BMJ Open, describes the Patient Bridge approach in detail. It reflects upon the challenges we faced implementing this new approach and walks the reader through how we tackled these challenges.

We believe that the Patient Bridge approach offers a promising strategy for enhancing PPI in large research programmes – read about the novel approach here: Patient Bridge Role: a new approach for patient and public involvement in healthcare research programmes | BMJ Open

Many thanks to the SPOCC patient advisory group for their work in developing the Patient Bridge role.

Patient Bridge approach poster presentation at SAPC: Leon Farmer (public member and co-author) and Beccy Summers (PPIE team and co-author)