Reimagining the medication list - A co-design research study looking for participants

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Paul.mcenhill

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Hello,

I am a Junior Doctor and Master’s degree student at Imperial College London. We have created a research study to learn more about how people with diabetes understand their medications, this includes tablets and insulin. Research has shown that people with diabetes and their healthcare team often have different priorities and needs when it comes to medication. We hope by speaking with you, we can make the design of medicines information better for everyone with diabetes.

We would like to invite you to take part in a 30-minute interview, via Zoom to discuss your diabetes medications, your views on them and if you do anything to help make the process of taking medication easier.

After this, if you are interested, we would send you some worksheets, to help further understand your thoughts, these would include describing your medications and designing the ideal medication box, with the information you would like to see.

We also hope to bring all these insights together to run a co-design workshop with participants and designers from the Royal College of Art – to make your ideas into a prototyped reality.

If you are interested in taking part, please email paul.mcenhill20@imperial.ac.uk and I will send you more detailed information as a participant information sheet.

Emailing does not represent agreement to taking part and you can choose to only take part in the interview element if you would prefer.

Thank you for your consideration,

Kind Regards,

Dr. Paul McEnhill
2nd Year Masters Student
Healthcare and Design
Imperial College London		Dr. Ana Luísa Neves
Principal Investigator
Advanced Research Fellow and Associate Director
NIHR Imperial Patient Safety Translational Research Centre
Imperial College London

This study has been approved by @Cherrelle DUK
 
Hello,

Just a follow-up message in case anyone missed the first post. We have successfully conducted interviews with the first few participants. We are still looking for additional participants to share their perspectives. Please get in touch with us by email if you are interested or wish to ask questions - paul.mcenhill20@imperial.ac.uk

Thank you,
Kind Regards,
Paul McEnhill
 
Paul.mcenhill said:
Hello,

Just a follow-up message in case anyone missed the first post. We have successfully conducted interviews with the first few participants. We are still looking for additional participants to share their perspectives. Please get in touch with us by email if you are interested or wish to ask questions - paul.mcenhill20@imperial.ac.uk

Thank you,
Kind Regards,
Paul McEnhill
Click to expand...
Popped you a email.
 
Paul.mcenhill said:
Hello,

I am a Junior Doctor and Master’s degree student at Imperial College London. We have created a research study to learn more about how people with diabetes understand their medications, this includes tablets and insulin. Research has shown that people with diabetes and their healthcare team often have different priorities and needs when it comes to medication. We hope by speaking with you, we can make the design of medicines information better for everyone with diabetes.

We would like to invite you to take part in a 30-minute interview, via Zoom to discuss your diabetes medications, your views on them and if you do anything to help make the process of taking medication easier.

After this, if you are interested, we would send you some worksheets, to help further understand your thoughts, these would include describing your medications and designing the ideal medication box, with the information you would like to see.

We also hope to bring all these insights together to run a co-design workshop with participants and designers from the Royal College of Art – to make your ideas into a prototyped reality.

If you are interested in taking part, please email paul.mcenhill20@imperial.ac.uk and I will send you more detailed information as a participant information sheet.

Emailing does not represent agreement to taking part and you can choose to only take part in the interview element if you would prefer.

Thank you for your consideration,

Kind Regards,

Dr. Paul McEnhill
2nd Year Masters Student
Healthcare and Design
Imperial College London		Dr. Ana Luísa Neves
Principal Investigator
Advanced Research Fellow and Associate Director
NIHR Imperial Patient Safety Translational Research Centre
Imperial College London

This study has been approved by @Cherrelle DUK
Click to expand...

I am assuming this is for diabetes medications only? Does food and lifestyle come into your list, because for me, that is the cornerstone of everything.

I appreciate that may not be something you are considering in the context of your own study, but all too often individuals are given medications without the opportunity to explore unmedicated options in the first instance.

If there is to be a list, for me, it is important all options are included.
 
Having had dreadful consequences from accepting Metformin, Atorvastatin and the AZ vaccination - but finding diabetes easy to negate and Covid fairly insignificant on the 3 occasions I caught it - I really do feel that I'd be safer away from doctors.
 
Thank you for your consideration of the study so far. I am currently in the final stages of recruitment. This will be the final shout out. If you would like to take part or receive more information - please get in touch with me and I would be more than happy to provide further information. Thank you - Paul, paul.mcenhill20@imperial.ac.uk
 
Paul.mcenhill said:
We have created a research study to learn more about how people with diabetes understand their medications, this includes tablets and insulin.
Click to expand...
You seem to be excluding those who are managing their diabetes without medication - with diet and exercise. Is that deliberate?
 
AndBreathe said:
I am assuming this is for diabetes medications only? Does food and lifestyle come into your list, because for me, that is the cornerstone of everything.

I appreciate that may not be something you are considering in the context of your own study, but all too often individuals are given medications without the opportunity to explore unmedicated options in the first instance.

If there is to be a list, for me, it is important all options are included.
Click to expand...
Hi,

Thank you for your thoughts.Our study is looking mainly at medications for diabetes. However, you do raise a very interesting point and it is one of our objectives - to understand what people who are taking medication for diabetes value and understand the factors which are considered when thinking about medication. There is certainly potential here to explore how diet and exercise influence these considerations. I will @ you in my response below to Transistor where I discuss further about choices in defining the recruitment criteria for this study.
 
Transistor said:
You seem to be excluding those who are managing their diabetes without medication - with diet and exercise. Is that deliberate?
Click to expand...
AndBreathe said:
but all too often individuals are given medications without the opportunity to explore unmedicated options in the first instance.
Click to expand...
Hello,

For this study, the population we decided to look at was people who are taking medication for the management of diabetes (T1 and T2). The principle reasons for this are participant time and our specific expertise.

Many studies are conducted each year in the field of diabetes and all of these studies require participants who are willing to give up some of their time to take part. We value participant time highly so we would only recruit into a study when we think we can deliver on a research objective and help to improve care for the wider population. To deliver high quality research, we need to ensure that the expertise of the researchers can provide insights into the research question and fully understand the participant contributions.

This leads to my second point which is that both researchers on this study are medical doctors, whilst we have experience with initial management of type 2 diabetes involving diet and exercise, it is not our area of expertise when it comes to research compared to the substantial knowledge of our diabetes dieticians and physiotherapy colleagues. We have more experience in prescribing and understanding medications for Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. It is for this reason that when we consider participant time and designing a study to deliver improvements in care using our skillset, we have chosen this recruitment criteria, focussing on medication.

There have been trials recently, for example, DiRECT (https://www.directclinicaltrial.org.uk/) which looked specifically at the role of diet and weight loss in type 2 diabetes and it showed excellent results. One of the main investigators was a Professor of Nutrition and so the skillset was suited to the study objectives.

I hope this answer is helpful and I am more than happy to clarify anything,
Thank you,
Kind Regards,
Paul
 
I'm a bit confused. There is no medication for Type 1 diabetes other than insulin which cannot be kept in a box. I do admittedly also take 6 tablets every morning - but NONE are to treat my diabetes!
 
Hi Paul

Hope you don’t mind me replying here…..

Everyone I spoke with Paul a couple of weeks ago about his project, as someone with complex medical issues and currently having massive issues with pancreatitis I feel this project has so much potential to help both complex and diabetic patients who have to start meds. My meds come in blister packs so I often have to hunt out leaflets online and due to the number of different meds I take they often are sorely lacking in information on both complex drug reactions and those reactions related to some medical conditions.

Since my interview with Paul I had had two massive reactions to drugs, one isn’t mentioned anywhere so I had to report to the yellow card scheme and appears was related to a drug triggering my three sleep disorders to all become active at once and left me very mentally unwell, within 48 hours of stopping the meds things started to improve but still aren’t great.

Now a week into antibiotics for an ulcer my diabetic team tried adding a different diabetic medication which has triggered tummy symptoms and luckily it happened last time so I was prepared, the clinic are insisting one last try before moving to insulin. There was nothing in the antibiotics leaflet to say how to manage issues with tummy problems and diabetes and no leaflet provided for the diabetes drug.

I am lucky in that my mum was a pharmacist in her working life so at 9pm last night she was able to help me avoid spending last night in A&E, not all diabetes patients have they kind of knowledge in their family or friends circle, as I had no diabetic drug leaflet to refer to and couldn’t leave the bathroom without help (I walk with crutches), my poor husband couldn’t cope so rang mum and we went back to basics with hydration until symptoms eased and my sugar levels came down enough for me to lie down and rest.

So in nutshell what I am trying to say is tweaking leaflets with our help will not just help patients taking meds now but will also be of use to you that do end up having to progress from diet control to medication and help them have the resources they need to manage side affects better.
 
Paul.mcenhill said:
Hello,

For this study, the population we decided to look at was people who are taking medication for the management of diabetes (T1 and T2). The principle reasons for this are participant time and our specific expertise.

Many studies are conducted each year in the field of diabetes and all of these studies require participants who are willing to give up some of their time to take part. We value participant time highly so we would only recruit into a study when we think we can deliver on a research objective and help to improve care for the wider population. To deliver high quality research, we need to ensure that the expertise of the researchers can provide insights into the research question and fully understand the participant contributions.

This leads to my second point which is that both researchers on this study are medical doctors, whilst we have experience with initial management of type 2 diabetes involving diet and exercise, it is not our area of expertise when it comes to research compared to the substantial knowledge of our diabetes dieticians and physiotherapy colleagues. We have more experience in prescribing and understanding medications for Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. It is for this reason that when we consider participant time and designing a study to deliver improvements in care using our skillset, we have chosen this recruitment criteria, focussing on medication.

There have been trials recently, for example, DiRECT (https://www.directclinicaltrial.org.uk/) which looked specifically at the role of diet and weight loss in type 2 diabetes and it showed excellent results. One of the main investigators was a Professor of Nutrition and so the skillset was suited to the study objectives.

I hope this answer is helpful and I am more than happy to clarify anything,
Thank you,
Kind Regards,
Paul
Click to expand...

Paul.mcenhill said:
Hi,

Thank you for your thoughts.Our study is looking mainly at medications for diabetes. However, you do raise a very interesting point and it is one of our objectives - to understand what people who are taking medication for diabetes value and understand the factors which are considered when thinking about medication. There is certainly potential here to explore how diet and exercise influence these considerations. I will @ you in my response below to Transistor where I discuss further about choices in defining the recruitment criteria for this study.
Click to expand...

Whilst this isn't directly related to your study I wondered if you might find it interesting.

 
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