Congratulations Katarina Grim, docent in social work! You have been granted funding from Forte for a study on Patientforum. Can you tell us more about the research project?
– Thank you! It feels like a big achievement, and it was in tough competition that we managed to secure SEK 6.5 million in funding for our study where we will investigate the effect of Patientforum and how it can contribute to organisational development. The aim is to learn from successful examples of Patientforum within regional operations and then adapt the method to a municipal context. The study is a collaboration between the Swedish Partnership for Mental Health (NSPH), NSPH Skåne and Lund Municipality.
What are you hoping to achieve with the project?
– NSPH Skåne, together with Region Skåne, has successfully developed and implemented Patientforum in all of Skåne’s inpatient facilities and some outpatient clinics. This allows patients to take part in an ongoing dialogue about their care experiences, needs and wishes. Over a period of three years, we will study NSPH Skåne’s model and together with them, Lund Municipality and users, adapt, test and evaluate the method to see how it can work in a municipal, social psychiatric context.
Why is this important?
– Social services have requested support to develop sustainable methods for user involvement for a long time. Patientforum cannot be directly copied and applied to social psychiatry, where users often have multiple different interventions and lack established meeting places. We need to co-produce a model that works for social psychiatry. If we succeed in Lund, it could inspire other municipalities in the country to follow suit.
What happens next?
– This year, we are starting slowly by meeting in the project group and establishing the infrastructure for the project. In January 2026, we will officially begin the first phase of the project, which involves mapping patient forum practices around the country.
The project is part of the research programme UserInvolve, which focuses on the development and implementation of user involvement, and is based on a collaboration between Swedish universities, the organised user movement and welfare services working with mental health.
