Individual public representatives were integrated into programme committees as follows:
- Peter Dodds (stroke survivor; co-applicant and Programme Steering Committee member)
- Bill Laing (stroke survivor; PASTA TSC member)
- Melissa Roberts (carer; PASTA TSC member)
- David Burgess (carer; WP2 group member).
They attended project management meetings and contributed to the design and interpretation of all aspects of the work. They facilitated recruitment of participants for the public engagement work to design the PASTA intervention (see Work package 1, Development of the Paramedic Acute Stroke Treatment Assessment), preferences for IAT provision (see Work package 2, Patient and public preferences on attributes of intra-arterial thrombectomy service organisation) and BWS survey (see Work package 2, Patient, carer and public preferences). There was a strong connection to the regional NIHR Clinical Research Network North-East Stroke Patient and Carer Research Panel, which provided views on the priority order of research questions, public materials and information sheets to be used in the programme. These individual representatives and groups are acknowledged in the programme publications.31,36,83–85,95 In addition, David Burgess is a co-author on several WP2 outputs83–85,95 and shared the results at several public stakeholder groups including the National Stroke Assembly. Feedback from public dissemination activities was fed back into the WP2 objectives, including the development of the ITEMS online tool.
Across the programme, there was comprehensive engagement with patients, carers and relevant public stakeholders through the research designs employed. Twenty patient representatives assisted with the development of the PASTA intervention in an iterative co-production process in groups with hospital and ambulance practitioners. This increased the probability that the content of the enhanced paramedic role and stroke care pathway would be acceptable to patients and the purpose of the intervention was meaningful. Over 147 members of the public responded to our questionnaire on stroke service configuration to ensure that their views were incorporated into modelling options, and 105 members of the public participated in the BWS exercise, which was developed out of the information and learning from the preceding survey. A public summary of results was distributed to participants who provided contact details. The findings were important as they demonstrated broad agreement between the views of professionals and stroke survivors, their carers and the wider public on critical attributes related to thrombectomy service organisation.