Introduction

Involving and engaging patients and members of the public with lived experience (public contributors) is important to us because so much of what we do as a Faculty and University, from teaching clinical skills to scientific breakthroughs benefits local communities and further afield.

Public contributors bring unique and valuable insights and are integral to our teaching and research. It is therefore essential to recognise the achievements of projects/activities and to support our staff, students and public contributors to successfully embed Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE)

Background

High quality PPIE is important in supporting an open, inclusive and accessible research and teaching culture. There are many ways that this can be achieved, and the Quality Mark is one example.

Kay Gallacher, public contributor, and co-chair of the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health’s (FBMH) PPIE Forum, came up with the idea of creating a tool to help self-assess and ultimately improve the quality of PPIE. Find out more about this on our blog.

Members of the FBMH PPIE Forum, (a group comprised of public contributors, staff and students), embarked on creating the draft criteria of what is now known as the ‘PPIE Quality Mark’ (formerly the PPIE Chartermark).

Public contributors are at the heart of the Quality Mark and have been involved in all aspects of its creation. Their involvement must be an integral aspect of PPIE and the Faculty’s work and not simply a tick-box exercise.

What is the PPIE Quality Mark?

The Quality Mark is a standard/tool created to improve the quality of PPIE. The aim of the Quality Mark is to aid you in self-assessing, self-reflection or the planning and implementation of your PPIE activity/project.

The Quality Mark features a clear set of standards in the form of 10 criteria and can be used in many different ways, including as a>

• self-assessment tool,
• checklist for conducting PPIE,
• self-reflection tool or for signposting to resources.

By completing the Quality Mark as a self-assessment tool, you can award yourself a bronze, silver or gold award. This is dependent on the level of criteria you can attribute to your project/activity. We hope that the different award levels will encourage accountability and continued improvement.