Patient Involvement in arthritis research 

What is Patient Involvement?  

Patient involvement refers to a person living with arthritis, or their partner, family member or carer acting as active partners and leaders in research activities.     

Patient involvement can take many forms, such as co-producing patient information booklets, facilitating project workshops and contributing to project presentations, all of which are valuable at different stages of your project. Good practice is to 'do with' and work in partnership. For example, asking people to review plans or communications, is important, but better still, you might work jointly and produce shared plans and objectives from the outset.

What difference does involvement really make to research projects, outcomes and people with arthritis?

Versus Arthritis involvement expectations 

We support the UK Standards for Public involvement and the EULAR recommendations for involvement in rheumatology research, and expect that these will be adhered to throughout research projects. Working in partnership with people who have lived experience of arthritis we have developed our Versus Arthritis Good Practice Guidelines for Involvement to share our expectations with our colleagues, health professionals and researchers. Take a look at our page that collates and summarises the standards, recommendations and guidelines here. 

What could involvement in research look like in your work?  

If you are new to involving people with arthritis in your research, find out how to get started here.

The people involved in your research should be reflective of the people your research aims to impact, you can find advice, support and resources to help with achieving this here. 

Research involvement should happen at every stage of the research cycle, in all types of research projects, including lab-based research. 

You can look at tips and resources to involve people at each stage of your study through our research cycle pages below.