Service user involvement in cancer care: the impact on service users.

Background: Service user involvement is embedded in the United Kingdom's National Health Service, but knowledge about the impact of involvement on service users, such as the benefits and challenges of involvement, is scant. Our research addresses this gap.

Objective: To explore the personal impact of involvement on the lives of service users affected by cancer.

Getting ready for user involvement in a systematic review.

Objective: This paper aims to support the critical development of user involvement in systematic reviews by explaining some of the theoretical, ethical and practical issues entailed in 'getting ready' for user involvement.

Background: Relatively few health or social care systematic reviews have actively involved service users. Evidence from other research contexts shows that user involvement can have benefits in terms of improved quality and outcomes, hence there is a need to test out different approaches in order to realize the benefits of user involvement and gain a greater understanding of any negative outcomes.

Patients' needs assessment in cancer care: a review of assessment tools.

Background: The assessment of patients' needs for care is a critical step in achieving patient-centred cancer care. Tools can be used to assess needs and inform care planning. This review discusses the importance of systematic assessment of needs in routine care and the contribution tools can make to this process.

Service user involvement in nursing, midwifery and health visiting research: a review of evidence and practice.

Objectives: In the UK policy recommends that service users (patients, carers and the public) should be involved in all publicly funded health and social care research. However, little is known about which approaches work best in different research contexts and why. The purpose of this paper is to explain some of the theoretical limitations to current understandings of service user involvement and to provide some suggestions for theory and methods development.

Interprofessional collaboration with service users in the development of cancer services: the Cancer Partnership Project.

Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) is a cornerstone of UK National Health Service (NHS) policy. The Cancer Partnership Project (CPP) is the leading national PPI initiative in cancer care. The CPP espouses a "partnership" model, with a "Partnership Group" - collaborative service improvement groups formed of NHS staff and service users - in each of 34 cancer networks in England.

'Working the system'. Achieving change through partnership working: an evaluation of cancer partnership groups.

Aims And Objectives: To investigate the characteristics and achievements of cancer partnership groups--collaborative service improvement groups formed of NHS staff and service users--in the 34 cancer networks in England, and in particular to explore the influence that such groups had on local cancer services.

Design: A qualitative approach employing a structured telephone survey, face-to-face interviews and documentary analysis.

Participants And Setting: Thirty cancer networks in England with an active Partnership Group completed the telephone survey.

Good practice in the conduct and reporting of survey research.

Survey research is sometimes regarded as an easy research approach. However, as with any other research approach and method, it is easy to conduct a survey of poor quality rather than one of high quality and real value. This paper provides a checklist of good practice in the conduct and reporting of survey research.

Barriers to research utilisation: the clinical setting and nurses themselves.

The advance of the evidence-based practice (EBP) movement has been evident in almost every Western country and health system over the past two or three decades, fuelled by an ever-rising demand on resources. Nurses at all levels are increasingly expected to address the key challenge of EBP, which is to use research evidence in a conscientious, explicit and judicious way when making decisions about patient care. The main aim of the paper is to encourage nurses to embrace the challenge of EBP.

Lymphoedema 4: research priorities in lymphoedema care.

This article, the last in the series on lymphoedema, presents a survey of priorities in lymphoedema research conducted among lymphoedema treatment practitioners in the UK. Using a two-stage survey method, members of the British Lymphology Society were asked to identify areas lacking in a good evidence base which were crucial for informing clinical decision-making and service developments. Nine priority research questions were identified by the practitioners, with general agreement among respondents of the ranking order.