"Staged-and-Tailored" Informed Consent: International Symposium
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Tuesday 6th June 2023
10am - 4pm BST
Abstract Submission Guidelines
“Staged-and-Tailored” Informed Consent
6Th June 2023
Perspectives and experiences of staged-and-tailored approaches to informed consent for individually randomised pragmatic trials.
The objectives are to share and explore what is known about the use, acceptability and efficiency of staged-and-tailored approaches to informed consent and to provide a forum for discussion.
Outputs from this symposium will support the future development of guidance on these type of structured approaches to informed consent for pragmatic trials.
To submit an abstract please email it to b.nickolls@qmul.ac.uk
The deadline to submit an abstract for this symposium is Friday 31st March 2023.
Submitting authors will be notified about the outcome of their submissions during the week commencing Monday 8th May 2023.
The word limit for each abstract is 400 words (excluding the title and references).
Maximum 5 references
All abstracts must be written and presented in English.
Presentation Type
Select whether you would prefer to be considered for an Oral Presentation or considered for a Poster Presentation or Either.
If awarded, an Oral Presentation would be a talk (likely 8 to 12 minutes) plus an allowance for Q&A, accompanied by a presentation (PowerPoint).
If awarded, a Poster would be displayed electronically during the conference for delegates to view.
There may be a session of quick Poster talks (5 mins each).
Affiliations
Please list all authors and their affiliations.
Suggested structure
*Introduction (covering aims/objectives/settings)
*Methods/Approach (making clear the approach e.g. applications and implementation, mixed methods, opinion, qualitative, quantitative, review, simulation, survey, SWATs) *Results (or what form the results will take)
* Discussion including Potential Relevance and Impact
Unstructured abstracts are welcome for non-empirical work.
Review Process
Each abstract will be reviewed by at least 2 reviewers appointed by the Scientific Committee. Authors will be notified about the outcome of their submission(s) during the week commencing Monday 8th May 2023. The notification will be sent to the submitting author only.
For any queries please email Beverley Nickolls (b.nickolls@qmul.ac.uk)
Abstracts
Prospective authors of posters or presentations are invited to submit a title and maximum 400 word abstract.
Submission guidelines will be shared by 1st February 2023.
Deadline for submission is 3rd April 2023 by email.
Each abstract will be reviewed by at least two reviewers appointed by the Scientific Committee.
Authors will be notified about the outcome of their submissions during the week commencing 8th May 2023.
All symposium contributors will be invited to contribute to the manuscript reporting on the symposium.
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Scientific and Organising Committee
Bev Nickolls (Lead Co-ordinator)
PhD Research Student - Centre for Evaluation & Methods, Queen Mary University London, UK
Senior Lecturer Clinical/Public Health Trials - Centre for Evaluation & Methods, Queen Mary University, London, UK
Physician Researcher, CLEAR Methods Center, Division of Clinical Epidemiology, Department of Clinical Research, University Hospital Basel, University of Basel, Switzerland
Biostatistician & Research Methodologist - Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, USA
Professor of Evaluation of Image-Guided Treatment - Utrecht Mecial Centre, Netherlands
Professor Julius Sim
Statistician & Ethicist, School of Medicine, Keele University, UK
Clinical Trial Manager, Oxford Population Health, Oxford University
Post doctoral researcher - Utrecht Medical Centre, Utrecht, Netherlands
Clinical Epidemiologist, Post doctoral researcher - Utrecht Medical Centre, Utrecht, Netherlands
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Background
Standard guidance on informed consent process for randomised controlled trials of health interventions is useful for trial designs where all participants will receive either an experimental intervention or placebo i.e. something other than usual care. However, there is no specific guidance on informed consent approaches for trials with usual care comparators.
A growing number of triallists are using alternative approaches to informed consent for trials with usual care comparators in order to reduce/avoid expectation and disappointment bias, improve recruitment efficiency and representativeness. These alternative approaches either stage and/or tailor the informed consent processes (e.g., the usual care group is not informed about treatments that they are not going to be offered). Examples of these structured approaches include the Trials within Cohorts (TwiCs) design (1) now being used in a variety of clinical contexts (2) and the One-stage versus Two (3) currently being tested in cancer. However, there is limited knowledge of these alternative structured approaches and no guidance on informed consent approaches for these types of pragmatic trials.
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This symposium addresses the James Lind Priority Setting Partnership on Recruitment in Randomised Trials Top Priority Question: What are the best approaches to optimise the informed consent process (who should take consent, timing of consent, method and format of consent) to improve recruitment of members of the public to randomised trials)?
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References
1. Relton C, Torgerson D, O'Cathain A, Nicholl J. Rethinking pragmatic randomised controlled trials: introducing the "cohort multiple randomised controlled trial" design. BMJ. 2010;340:c1066.
2. Nickolls B, Relton C, Eldridge S, Zwarenstein M, McCall S, Hemkens L, et al. Protocol for a scoping review of randomised controlled trials conducted using cohorts. Open Science Framework. 2021.
3. Vickers AJ, Young-Afat DA, Ehdaie B, Kim SY. Just-in-time consent: The ethical case for an alternative to traditional informed consent in randomized trials comparing an experimental intervention with usual care. Clin Trials. 2018;15(1):3-8.
This international symposium is supported by a PPI grant from the Research Design Service (London, UK)