Patient partnership: a roundup from the BMJ patient advisory panel

TheBMJ has long been committed to partnering with patients and the public. In 2014 it launched the patient partnership strategy, incorporating patient perspectives throughout the journal.1 This included embedding patient peer review in research, inviting patient authored content, and asking authors to seek patient input in their articles, as well as documenting their input—also known as co-production.2 While partnering with patients and the public is not a new concept, during the covid-19 pandemic much of that work in healthcare and research was abandoned, leaving patients feeling excluded, ignored, and forgotten.3 At The BMJ we wanted to ensure we continued pushing patient involvement at the journal during the pandemic, despite …