Patient panel for the Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (OxBRC) Infection Theme
Creating research projects with patients, for patients
You or someone you know will almost certainly have taken antibiotics at some point. Antibiotics kill
one kind of microbe that makes us sick (bacteria), but doesn’t kill others (like viruses and fungi).
Microbes can develop resistance so that the antibiotics don’t work. More and more microbes are
becoming resistant, and you may have seen stories about this in the news. This is worrying because
drugs may not work or work less well in the future, meaning that people start becoming really sick or
dying from common infections.
We are doing a number of research studies looking at microbes, the infections they cause, and
antibiotics (including whether we are using too many of them, given that the microbes are becoming
more resistant to antibiotics), in the Oxford University Hospitals (OUH).
We want to create our research projects with patients, for patients, and make them more relevant
for patients. To help us do this, we would like to set up a small panel of 5-8 people made up of OUH
patients, relatives/carers/friends of patients, or just as interested people from the community.
The panel would come together for a few hours, 2-3 times a year, at the John Radcliffe Hospital, to
talk about some of the research that could be done in infections and antibiotics in the OUH. The
panel would also be sent some paper or electronic information to look at and comment on. This
group could be at the cutting edge of how we influence the use of antibiotics in the future.
There would also be opportunities to talk one-to-one with researchers about particular studies or
questions, and to visit the laboratories where we grow the microbes from patient specimens and do
tests on them.
We would reimburse panel members for their travel to come to meetings, their time at meetings
and their time looking at written documents (paper or electronic).
What are we looking for?

someone who is interested in how infections and antibiotics are dealt with; no prior clinical
knowledge is needed

someone who would be happy to come and talk to researchers about research studies we
could do and give an honest opinion about what they think about them (2-3 hours, 3 times a
year). We don’t expect you to be a scientist! Just to have some interest.

someone who would be willing to think about their hospital experiences, and those of others
they know, particularly relating to infections and antibiotics, and what research could be
done to find out how to make things better or allay people’s fears

someone who is interested in sharing their views to think with clinical researchers about
developing studies to find out:
o
how we can use antibiotics better now and in the future
o
how we can use hospital data to find out how to improve things for patients
o
how we can use new technologies, like reading the letters of a microbe’s genetic
code, to track microbes around the hospital and work out what antibiotics to use
faster

someone who would read information about applications for study funding and say what
they like and don’t like about them, and how they could be made better

someone who can develop or review Patient Information leaflets for studies that we do in
the future from the patients perspective, to make sure that we get it right and it is easily
understood
If you are interested and would like to discuss this further or would like to apply, please contact
Helen Barker on 01865 221 334 or helen.barker@ndm.ox.ac.uk before 30 September 2013