The BMJ’s own patient journey

A year ago The BMJ committed to setting up an international panel of patients, patient advocates, and clinicians to help us develop a strategy to advance the “patient revolution” in healthcare.1 This week we are launching it, with due thanks to the members of our advisory panel.2 Over the past six months they have stimulated, provoked, steered, and supported us to make landmark changes to our editorial processes. Changes that we hope will add to national and international efforts to improve the quality, safety, value, and sustainability of health systems through realising the transformative potential of working in partnership with patients, their families, communities, and advocacy groups.3 So what have we done?

Firstly, we have embedded patient peer review of research papers. We started in January with randomised controlled trials and have now extended it to all research papers where patient input would clearly be helpful. We are also calling for the submission of robust research papers that advance the science, art, implementation, and assessment of the impact of patient partnership, shared decision making, and patient centred care. Authors of research papers are being asked to document if and how they involved …