Public Contributor Kay Gallacher has recently been appointed Co-Chair for the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health’s Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) Forum. She will be writing a quarterly blog to provide an update on her role and the Forum. 

As the Co-Chair for the Faculty’s Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) Forum, I “work” closely with the Social Responsibility and Pubic Engagement team (SRPE). They are the central contact for Social Responsibility and PPIE activities carried out in the Faculty. I thought I’d use this Blog to give you an overview of the team and some of the services they offer for Public Contributors. If you are already a Public Contributor you will have had some contact with them. 

Training for PPIE

Public Contributors have access to some of the Faculty’s programme of training. I recently attended a brilliant “Chairing Effective Meetings” half day course which gave me a lot of confidence to chair meetings and provided me with tools to work out things such as:

• If a meeting is viable;
• Agenda setting;
• How to deal with disruptive people; 
• How to get the best out of everyone round the table.

A catalogue of training opportunities specifically for Public Contributors is currently being created by the SRPE Team. This will include the Public Contributor Induction session and also a social media session which focuses on how to use Twitter for your involvement and engagement. Our next session will take place on Wednesday 1^st April. Click here for more information and to register. Information about further training can be found here.

Blog webpage

If you’re reading this, you will already have found the new Faculty PPIE Blog site which will be promoted over the coming months. This is YOUR blog site, so, if you have a burning desire to share something about PPIE or your thoughts on being a Public Contributor, then please contact the SRPE team with a brief summary of what you would like your blog to include. It’s a great way of getting more involved (and even letting off steam!) and we would love to hear from you.

Public Engagement Digest

The SRPE team creates a fortnightly newsletter digest email which is a fantastic way to stay up-to-date with PPIE across the Faculty, including; exciting new events, opportunities to get involved with PPIE and to hear about new research funding calls. The digest goes out to staff, students and Public Contributors so to stay in the loop with what is going on – sign yourself up here.

Support and guidance

There’s now a collection of helpful resources that are designed to support Public Contributors, staff and students with their PPIE which have been co-produced between staff and Public Contributors. These include the Being a Public Contributor Induction Guide which provides useful information about being a Public Contributor within the Faculty. The guide will soon be available in various forms but if you would like a paper copy of this guide now, please contact the SRPE team.

If you would also like more information about how you can enhance the quality of research or help to train the next generation of medical and health professionals by contributing your experiences of being a patient, service user or carer, click here.

Events/celebration

Every summer, the Faculty hosts a PPIE Celebration Event to recognise the inspirational and dedicated commitment to PPIE from staff, students and Public Contributors, and to celebrate all the wonderful PPIE activities from the academic year. The event takes place annually and is organised by a planning group which includes Public Contributors. If you’d like to attend the 2020 celebration event, please contact the SRPE team to register your interest.

The University also hosts an annual Community Festival which is a family-friendly event with a wide range of interactive activities across University campus. It’s a great day and many of the Public Contributors who have taken part really enjoyed themselves. The next event will take 27^th June – to find out more about this, and other public events, click here.

Public Contributors play a vital part in many of the University events.  For information about other events including the Manchester Science Festival, events at Manchester Museum, and the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences, have a look at the Social Responsibility events page.

To find out more about members of the SRPE team look out for the ‘spot light on…’ blog which will be posted shortly. 

For more information about other PPIE events, training and funding opportunities, you can sign up to our monthly digest, visit our website, follow us on twitter or email srbmh@manchester.ac.uk. For further PPIE resources, visit the Faculty’s PPIE Toolkit.

Related