Wednesday, 10 May 2023

We welcomed new members to the group. Kate started by outlining the purpose of our group and what patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) is. We then went round the table, and everyone introduced themselves and told the group a bit about their background and how they found themselves at our group meeting. Kate introduced the main objectives of the meeting which were to hear from Helen Cullington and Sarah Smith about their research proposal/ideas and discuss these. Also, to briefly discuss the research process and other opportunities for involvement. Helen told the group about the research project she is involved with called BEARS which is a project aimed to use virtual reality games to help children hear better with two cochlear implants. Part of this work, Helen and her colleagues are interested in improving inclusivity within clinical trials. We had a group discussion about the barriers to getting involved in research. This included things like travel, family responsibilities, fear of failure, lack of trust in researchers/healthcare and lack of access to information for minority ethnic groups.

Next Sarah Smith, a member of ALL_EARS, discussed a research project she came up with which aims to improve the support for cochlear implant aftercare through running informal, coffee mornings in the community with a hearing therapist, technical specialist and other CI users present. The group discussed ideas for how this could be done and why this is important. This is important because some people find remote care or telemedicine challenging and therefore would benefit from a more hands-on approach.

Tracey gave a brief overview about the research process and the different things us as researchers must think about when planning a research project. An important element of this is the identifying and prioritising ideas stage which relies heavily upon the involvement of members of the group to share their ideas and unique knowledge and lived experience with us.  Alisha, a medical student working with us, gave an overview of the project she has been working on to evaluate the barriers and facilitators to cochlear implantation in older adults. Alisha will be conducting some semi-structured interviews to gather more information for this project.

Finally, Kate gave some brief mentions of various other projects and things to highlight – such as pointing out our group website and the jam board which we plan to use to share ideas. Kate reminded the group of the evaluation questionnaire to complete by 17th May. And also highlighted to the group about the community project and that Kate will be visiting different community groups over the next few months to run activities, if any members of ALL_EARS would like to join her at any.