BMJ - Patient and public involvement in covid-19 policy making (1 July 2020)

Summary

This article in The BMJ by Tessa Richards, Senior Editor for patient partnership and Henry Scowcroft, Patient Editor, looks at the way in which people with expertise rooted in lived experience were excluded from policy decisions during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. They argue that engaging patients, families, and frontline health and social care professionals would have prevented some of the excess morbidity and mortality that came from policy responses to the pandemic, particularly among elderly people, those with long term conditions and those in lower socioeconomic groups.