Ethics Workshops-Are They Effective in Improving the Competencies of Faculty and Postgraduates?

Abstract

Introduction: Responsible conduct of research requires a good knowledge about research ethics. With the recent changes in the clinical trial regulations and the proposed introduction of ethics in medical curriculum by the Medical Council of India, there is an urgent need to train the medical faculty and postgraduates in research ethics. Methodology:We wanted to measure the effectiveness of a one day program which was organized using didactic lectures and case scenarios on the knowledge, attitude and skills on ethics among faculty and postgraduates. This was done using a retropre questionnaire. We performed a Kolmogorov Smirnov test to measure the normality, Mann Whitney U-test to test the difference in scores between faculty and postgraduates and a Wilcoxin signed rank test to measure the prepost scores.

Reporting of ethical considerations in clinical trials in Chinese nursing journals

“…Notably, only 27.4% of clinical trials reported that written consent had been obtained, and only 1.0% of clinical trials included the ethics committee reference number. Despite the rate of ethical approval reporting improved sharply between 2013 and 2016 (all p < 0.001) which may be induced by various kinds of efforts like the “Joint Statement of Establishing a Chinese Clinical Trial Registration and Publishing System,” 45 the regulation of ethics committee, as well as the effectiveness of many ethics workshops, 46 these data symbolize that the publication of ethically uncertain research occurs commonly in nursing journals in China. Most of the nursing periodicals in China did not meet their commitment to the Declaration of Helsinki which stated, “Publishers have ethical obligations”; significantly, the Declaration of Helsinki clearly stated that “reports of experimentation not in accordance with the principles laid down in this Declaration should not be accepted for publication.” Although a waiver of informed consent could be allowed in some special circumstances by the ethical guideline of the IRB or Council of Europe and Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS), there were no descriptions of impediments to obtaining written informed consent in these retrieved clinical trials in the studies included in this review.…”

Academic Guidance in Medical Student Research: How Well Do Supervisors and Students Understand the Ethics of Human Research?

“…Combining small group learning, practical cases, role-play and interdisciplinary learning have also been reported as effective approaches to providing education in research ethics (Zawati et al 2015). Similarly, programs reported to improve capacity in research supervision have included short courses, workshops or specific training (Balster et al 2010;Ramalingam et al 2014;Ajuwon and Kass 2008).…”

Postgraduate ethics training programs: a systematic scoping review

“…There is great variation in the timing and duration of such training sessions. Formal teaching run by the host organisation or institution tended to come in the form of mandatory training programmes [80,81] that span the course of a few years [62,82] or a single day [67]. Some programs are held over a few hours each year [58,94], or each month or every few months as part of a wider residency training program [49,59,83].…”