BMJ  2006;332:238 (28 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7535.238-a

Letter

Research governance

Research governance approval is putting people off research

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Editor—The BMJ has highlighted the bureaucratic burden placed on health researchers by the research governance approval process.^{1 2} Our own study sought only to interview health professionals in 12 trusts about giving advice, with a few patient telephone interviews, but the process of seeking approval from one research and development consortium delayed our project by 11 weeks.

If this sort of approval process does not put researchers off, then the procedure for gaining honorary contracts surely will. These contracts are apparently a necessary requirement for everyone conducting research in the NHS—even NHS staff if they are collecting data from NHS trusts other than the one that employs them. Unbelievably, even when one of us already held an NHS honorary contract with one trust, another honorary contract had to be issued by the same trust (with accompanying delays) because the previous one was linked to a different project.

Many trusts also require . . . [Full text of this article]

Division of Health in the Community, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL n.d.galbraith@warwick.ac.uk

Division of Health in the Community, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL

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This article has been cited by other articles:

• Angell, E, Dixon-Woods, M (2009). Do research ethics committees identify process errors in applications for ethical approval?. J. Med. Ethics 35: 130-132 [Abstract] [Full text]  
• Hackshaw, A., Farrant, H., Bulley, S., Seckl, M. J, Ledermann, J. A (2008). Setting up non-commercial clinical trials takes too long in the UK: findings from a prospective study. JRSM 101: 299-304 [Abstract] [Full text]  

Rapid Responses:

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Research governance- Let’s make bureaucracy history or let’s make research history

Abdolreza Shaghaghi
bmj.com, 16 Feb 2006 [Full text]

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