Introduction to special section on patient engagement

From its inception, the field of quality of life (QOL) research has focused on bringing the patient’s perspective to medical research. By creating patient-reported outcome tools, QOL investigators have helped to bring the patient’s voice and experience to center stage in evaluating medical treatments and considering health trajectories. The resulting research in this growing field has led to many findings that support the validity of the patient’s perspective, an important move away from a history of prevalent healthcare provider chauvinism—when only the doctor’s perspective was considered valid. This growing emphasis on patient-centered research has led to an even more radical concept: that patients could and should be involved at all stages of the research endeavor. This ‘soup-to-nuts’ perspective on patient engagement underlies many current funding initiatives in USA, Canada, Australia, and Europe. …