Melbourne Medical School Collected Works - Research Publications

Permanent URI for this collection

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    May I have your consent? Informed consent in clinical trials — feasibility in emergency situations
    Chan, EW ; Taylor, DMD ; Phillips, GA ; Castle, DJ ; Knott, JC ; Kong, DCM (Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2011-06-07)
    Clinical researchers in acute emergency settings are commonly faced with the difficulty of satisfying the conventional ethical requirement of obtaining informed consent, whilst ensuring a representative group of patients is recruited into studies. We discuss our own experience in addressing institutional ethical requirements to obtain informed consent in a multi-centre trial, recruiting highly agitated patients in the emergency setting in Melbourne, Australia. We suggest that, through the application of existing ethical and legal frameworks and pre-emptive communication with the key stakeholders in ethics committees, hospital insurers and legal representatives, a balance can be struck between ethical and legal requirements on the one hand, and the integrity of the research question, on the other.