Regular readers of the Injury Prevention blog will know what a keen advocate I am for the fourth ‘E’ in injury prevention: Engagement. I firmly believe that engagement is vital to transforming and translating education, engineering and enforcement efforts into real world advances in injury prevention. I know that in the domain of my own research and injury prevention efforts – young driver road safety – that young drivers want to be engaged with, and talked with, not TALKED AT and TOLD WHAT TO DO. Think about yourself as a teen – did that work with you? Providing such agency is the first sure step in making inroads in their safety, increasing their ownership and investment in injury prevention efforts and outcomes.

So you can understand how pleased I was when I saw a recent Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences article by Latimer, Chaboyer, and &Gillespie in which hospital patient perceptions regarding prevention and treatment of pressure injuries were explored. I particularly liked their closing comment that “If patient participation as a pressure injury prevention strategy is to be considered, nurses and organisations need to view patients as partners.”. I would argue that this should be extended to all injury prevention strategies, and that patient/target participation should not only be considered, it should be an essential component.