Table 2 Opportunities for collaboration.
Suggestion | Description |
|---|---|
Elevator pitches | Practice elevator pitches, or short 2–3 min talks, with patient advocates. Researchers benefit from working on science communication to explain their research in a more lay-friendly way and patient advocates can ask questions to learn more about the research. |
Journal clubs | Create journal clubs where patient advocates and research trainees take turns presenting and learning more about the field. Hearing different perspectives on the same publication will help identify priorities for each group. |
Lay abstracts | Write lay abstracts for posters and manuscripts and have a patient advocate help review it. This will not only enhance the relationship between the advocate and researcher but will also make the work more accessible to a larger audience. |
Laboratory meetings | Invite patient advocates to laboratory meetings. A patient advocate can ask questions that brings the discussion out of the details and addresses the bigger picture. Before trainees explain their experiment during laboratory meetings, require that they describe how it fits into the broader goal of their project. This will not only help the patient advocate, but it also ensures that the trainees consider and present the rationale for their experiments every time they explain their data. If researchers decide to include patient advocates in laboratory meetings, set the ground rules early by explaining to the patient advocate there will be times when the group needs to delve into details. It may be helpful to ask the patient advocate to write down questions for one on one discussions after the meeting, either with the PI or other members of the laboratory. Considering the patient advocate as an integral laboratory member with their own skill sets and expertise is the most appropriate mindset when including a patient advocate in laboratory meetings. |
Teaching | Including a patient advocate as a guest lecture or discussant can support a holistic understanding of tumor biology. Patient advocates can also sit in on mock study sections to support trainees’ explanation of their science to a broader audience, which can help not only for grants that include patient advocates on their panels, but also for study sections that have a broad topic area for funding. |
