Article Text
Abstract
I will tell my story of how my life was changed by illness and my career path altered. How by becoming a research patient support worker I found something positive to take from the negative experience of having a long term condition, and how from humble beginnings we have built up a research user group numbering over fifty patients with long-term conditions, primarily musculoskeletal who have been involved in over forty different projects investigating all aspects of life with a musculoskeletal condition. I will explain how our group have been recruited for their “expertise by experience” and how they are getting involved in projects using both quantitative and qualitative methods such as cohort studies, randomised control trials and observations and interviews in order to help shape the research agenda at Keele Primary Care Centre.
Disclosure of Interest None Declared