Developed by Valerie Moss, Jon Hoggard, and Emma Sutcliffe, the poster (and accompanying plain language summary) highlights the level of experience publications professionals had in working with patients as authors and how much is understood of the existing International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines around patient authorship. The poster also outlines several barriers that publications professionals identified as preventing more widespread involvement of patient authors.

All 40 publications professionals surveyed were current staff members of Prime Global, across a range of therapy areas and who have various amounts of professional experience.

It is important that we recognise that patient involvement in medical publications is becoming more widespread. This evolution has allowed medical publications to gain invaluable patient perspectives on clinical research, by involving patients as authors in the development of plain language summaries and other, more traditional types of research publications. (1)

However, as we know from surveys such as this one being presented at the 2022 ISMPP European meeting, in comparison to patient involvement in other aspects of research, such as study design and recruitment, patient involvement in publications has lagged behind. By identifying common barriers in the way of patient authorship, we hope that as an industry we can look at ways to make the process more streamlined and understood and thus establish patient authorship as a standard option for and valuable asset to medical publications.

Read more about the 2022 European meeting of ISMPP here

Read more about patient authorship here

Want to find out more about how we can help support your patient engagement? Find out more here.

Ref

1. Arnstein, L., Wadsworth, A.C., Yamamoto, B.A. et al. Patient involvement in preparing health research peer-reviewed publications or results summaries: a systematic review and evidence-based recommendations. Res Involv Engagem 6, 34 (2020).