Patient partnership falling to wayside in COVID-19 research rush: CMAJ

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 had a "catastrophic" impact on patient engagement in health research, says Bertrand Lebouché, a clinicianresearcher at McGill University Health Centre. Prior to the pandemic, funding bodies increasingly required investigators to involve patients throughout the research process --from setting priorities to translating results into practice. "It gives an opportunity for the patient to become part of the solution," says Lebouché. With COVID-19, these requirements mostly fell by the wayside. Patient partnership can be costly, time consuming and complicated, so it's understandable why it stalled in the first months of the pandemic. Yet more than a year later, many funding calls for COVID-19 research still don't mention the need to include patients or the public as partners.