The limits of patient and public involvement
Dr Mark Sheehan, Oxford Biomedical Research Centre Ethics Fellow
Wednesday, 20 February 2019, 11am to 12.30pm
Richard Doll Building, Old Road Campus, Oxford OX3 7LF. This talk will be held in the Rosemary Rue Teaching Room on the ground floor. Please ask at reception if you have trouble finding it. Please email admin@ethox.ox.ac.uk if you would like to attend.
abstract
The central question in this paper is about the limits and boundaries of the obligation to involve patients or the public in specific research at any point other than when they are being approached to participate. That is, for what kinds of research is there no obligation to involve either patients or the public? This question has important links to the justification of PPI and our understanding of that justification. If we can be clearer about what it is about certain cases that make them not examples where PPI is important, useful or required, then we have learnt something about why we think PPI is required in cases that are different.
The more specific question in the paper is about this ‘limits’ problem as it applies to theoretical, philosophical or ethics research about PPI. This more specific question poses interesting challenges in the context of how we answer the more general question about limits. It also, in important ways, highlights issues about how we think about ethics and what constitutes ‘doing ethics research’.