ABSTRACT
Patients may not always feel confident in speaking up in front of health professionals and typically there is a perceived power imbalance between patients and doctors. The emphasis in the example above was on introducing patients and carers into a community made up mainly of professionals. The programme involved setting up seven pilot services across England, based in primary and secondary care. The ‘Cancer Genetics Pilots Programme’, as it was known, gave service-user involvement high priority. The priorities identified were fed into the evaluations of the pilot projects and influenced the final reports. Conversations in the national group also confirmed how difficult it can be to reach certain population groups, such as ethnic minorities and poor families. New people joining would not have the benefit of the safe environment of a small group, and when they joined the Primary Care Community a few apparently made anti-General Practitioner (GP) or otherwise inappropriate remarks.
