Patient and public involvement
The CHICO intervention was developed in collaboration with both a Parent Advisory Group and a Clinician and Practitioner Advisory Group, which we met several times during the final year of the CHICO feasibility trial. The Parent Advisory Group thought that conducting a national study and using a whole practice intervention were important and that using a prediction tool on the computer during consultation would provide reassurance. They strongly endorsed and encouraged us to use the parent leaflet. Patient and public involvement was maintained throughout the main trial through a group of three parents, two of whom (in rotation) attended and contributed to all the Trial Steering Committee meetings, including the final results reveal meeting. As the intervention focus was on general practices and not on recruiting individual patients, we made extensive contact with the Clinician and Practitioner Advisory Group during the trial period. We sought advice on the use of alert style and trigger codes in a consultation, the format of the template, the personalised letter, and questionnaires used to collect the data. We also ran some “think aloud” sessions with several general practitioners to see the intervention in action in EMIS and gather their thoughts about any problems or changes needed. The findings were disseminated to the patient and public involvement group and Trial Steering Committee members for comment and presented at primary care conferences, and a summary will be fed back to practices as the data are published.