What does it mean to involve consumers successfully in NHS research? A consensus study

OBJECTIVE: To obtain consensus on the principles and indicators of successful consumer involvement in NHS research. DESIGN: Consensus methods were used. An expert workshop, employing the nominal group technique was used to generate potential principles and indicators. A two-round postal Delphi process was used to obtain consensus on the principles and indicators. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Participants were drawn from health, social care, universities and consumer organizations. A purposive sampling strategy was used to identify people who had experience and/or knowledge of consumer involvement in NHS research. Six researchers and seven consumers participated in an expert workshop. Ninety-six people completed both rounds of the Delphi process. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Consensus on principles and indicators of successful consumer involvement in NHS research. RESULTS: Eight principles were developed through an expert workshop and Delphi process, and rated as both clear and valid. Consensus was reached on at least one clear and valid indicator by which to measure each principle. CONCLUSIONS: Consensus has been obtained on eight principles of successful consumer involvement in NHS research. They may help commissioners, researchers and consumers to deepen their understanding of this issue, and can be used to guide good practice.     

Social work, general practice and evidence-based policy in the collaborative care of older people: current problems and future possibilities

While collaborative (or joint) working between social services and primary healthcare continues to rise up the policy agenda, current policy is not based on sound evidence of benefit to either patients or the wider community. Both sets of practitioners report benefits for their own work from adopting new arrangements for collaboration. The underlying assumption behind much of this activity is that a greater degree of integration provides benefits to both users and their carers, a perspective that at times obscures the issue of resource availability, especially in the form of practical community services such as district nursing and home help. At the present time there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate that formal arrangements for collaborative working (CW) are better than those forged informally between committed individuals or teams. Furthermore, arrangements for CW have not hitherto been widely evaluated in systematic studies with a comparative design and focus on outcomes for users and carers rather than on processes. In this paper we propose a number of process measures for future evaluation of CW: (1) study populations must be comparable; (2) details of how services are actually delivered must be obtained and colocation should not be assumed to mean collaboration; (3) care packages in areas of comparable resources should be examined; (4) both destinational outcomes and user‐defined evaluations of benefit should be considered; (5) possible disadvantages of integrated care also need to be actively considered; (6) evaluations should include an economic analysis. Those implementing new policies in Primary Care Trusts have, at present, little sound evidence to guide them in their innovative work. However, they should take the opportunity to rigorously test the advantages and disadvantages of collaboration.     

Evaluation of the use of reporter antigens in an auricular lymph node assay to assess the immunosensitizing potential of drugs.

Immune-mediated idiosyncratic drug reactions are a major problem for susceptible patients, physicians, and the pharmaceutical industry. Validated screening tools to assess the immunosensitizing capacity of orally or intravenously administered pharmaceuticals are currently not available. To date, the popliteal lymph node assay (PLNA) seems the most promising tool for this purpose. The PLNA has recently been extended with the use of reporter antigens (RA) that are coinjected together with the drug of interest. The measurement of isotypes of RA-specific antibody-secreting cells (ASC) enables the distinction of sensitizing chemicals and (nonsensitizing) irritants without radio-isotopic end points. However, the use of footpad injections raises ethical concerns. Therefore, we examined the use of RA after intradermal injection into the ear of BALB/c mice and measured RA-specific ASC in the draining auricular lymph node (ALN). We show that RA-specific IgG isotype ASC numbers are very useful and sensitive parameters to identify drug-induced hypersensitivity in both PLN and ALN. However, the type 1-associated parameters (CD8(+) cells, macrophages, IFN-gamma, TNF-alpha, and IL-1 beta) that are induced in the PLN by streptozotocin were less pronounced in the ALN. Thus, the PLNA may provide more immunologically relevant information on the mechanisms of certain chemical-induced hypersensitivity reactions. The RA-ALN assay may provide an alternative for the RA-PLNA; both assays can be used to distinguish sensitizing compounds from nonsensitizing ones.