Inappropriate hospital admissions: patient participation in research.

Although political interest in reducing the number of inappropriate hospital admissions is mounting, methods for researching the rate of inappropriate admissions have several major limitations. Whereas traditional studies have tended to be predominantly subjective, more recent studies using clinical review instruments also have a number of limitations. Chief among these is the failure to consider the potential input of the individual patient. To illustrate some of the possible benefits of patient participation, this article cites findings from a study in Birmingham, which sought to involve individual older people in a research study into emergency hospital admissions.