As both a researcher and a research administrator in healthcare, one of the more vexing issues that I have to deal with on an almost daily basis is how to manage what are termed quality assurance, quality improvement and audit activities. In its 2014 publication entitled “Ethical Considerations in Quality Assurance and Evaluation Activities”, the NHMRC (NHMRC QA guidance) suggests that these can be loosely gathered together under an umbrella term of Quality Assurance (QA) and/or evaluation. I believe this construct is wrong and reinforces a longstanding approach to ethics review that relies on the category of an investigative activity to determine the level of review that is used. This approach is problematic and leads to some significant unintended consequences.

Approximately 2.5 months from inception to execution, a veritable cornucopia of Australia’s thought leaders on topics such as consent, voluntary assisted dying (VAD), AI in healthcare, ethical aspects of research involving Indigenous people combined to make a three day phenomenon …

In this post, Gary asks when it comes to research ethics review, whether something useful might come from social distancing

In response to community feedback, from 1 November 2020, only papers, books and genuine resources will be posted to the AHRECS Resource Library; news and announcements will be posted to the feeds page.  Searches of the site can include searches of the feed. Links to Research Ethics Monthly editions will also be posted to the feeds page.  Please bear with us as we move all existing news items over to the feed. Eventually, this approach will make it easier to distinguish between research outputs and news items about human research ethics and research integrity.

Close to the bottom of our revamped home page is a world map that tags the places we have been commissioned to conduct Human Research Ethics or Research Integrity work or where we have conducted philanthropic/academic/volunteer/unpaid work.  Want to explore if we can do some work for you?  Terrific!  Drop us a line to [email protected] so we can discuss your ideas.

In this post, Gary, Mark and Kim refect on the draft update to Section 5 of the Australia’s National Statement.

“In recent years in Australia, we have seen some painful cases where research ethics review delegated to a non-HREC review body has failed to guard against projects that proved to be embarrassing for their host institution (see, for example, the ‘Racist bus driver’ and ‘Laughing at the disabled’ projects)….”