OBJECTIVES To investigate whether different study-to-participant communication methods increase response, increase response from hard-to-engage individuals, and influence participants' consent decisions. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING A randomized controlled trial within the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Cohort members were invited to re-enroll at age 18 and consent to linkage to...

Ghost surgery occurs when a physician assistant, a surgical assistant, an RN first assistant, a resident, or another surgeon assists on or performs an operative or other invasive procedure without the patient's knowledge, regardless of whether the surgeon who obtained the consent was scrubbed in or not. This practice denies patients important information, eliminates their ability to provide inf...

That people should only be enrolled in medical research if they have given free and informed consent is now an unquestioned principle of research ethics. It is however a recent innovation. Prior to the prominence given to consent to participation in research in the condemnation of German doctors arraigned at Nuremberg in 1945, informed consent had appeared in American litigation, but only as an...

OBJECTIVE To survey attendees at community meetings for an emergency research protocol and determine whether these meetings aid participants' understanding and decision to support the proposed emergency research. DESIGN Postmeeting questionnaire. SETTING Three community meetings for the PolyHeme study in San Antonio area. SUBJECTS One hundred fifty community meeting attendees. INTERVENT...

BACKGROUND Although signing a vaccination (or immunization) informed consent form is not a federal requirement in the US and Canada, such a practice is required by many states and pharmacies. The content and structures of these informed consent forms vary, which makes it hard to compare and analyze without standardization. To facilitate vaccination informed consent data standardization and inte...