Research should never take precedence over clinical care.
- For example, instead of recruiting within a normal clinic appointment, you should book an extra slot.
Patients should be told which part of their care is routine clinical care, and which part is experimental.
- This is to avoid ‘therapeutic misconception’ when patients believe that an experimental intervention is supposed to help them get better.
Subjects should not be confused between consent for a clinical procedure and consent for a research procedure.
- For example, if you would like to collect a patient’s surplus tissues during his / her routine operation, the patient should be consented for the surgery first before you obtain a separate consent for research specimen collection.
- You should make clear to patients that they do not need to agree to provide their specimens for research in order to be eligible for their operation. (1)
Secretariat for National Committee for Clinical Research, Ministry of Health Malaysia. Malaysian Guideline on the use of Human Biological Samples for Research [Internet]. Ministry of Health Malaysia; 2015. Available from: http://www.crc.gov.my/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Guideline_on_Human_Tissue_in_Clinical_Research.pdf