Project Summary: One of the challenges facing pediatric researchers is the need to balance decreasing funding with the time and human resource costs associated with enrolling children. In order to address this, the Emergency Department (ED) research team developed an innovative model for subject enrollment and consent using highly trained and supervised undergraduate students. From a human resources perspective, utilizing students is more cost effective than the traditional research nurse model. However, a concern with this method is the adequacy of parental understanding of study information for informed consent. The aim of this project is to determine if the use of students is at least as good as the more costly "gold standard" of experienced research nurses. The validation of this innovative student model will enable child health investigators to better meet parent's needs and increase the efficiency of pediatric research. The primary objective of this study is to measure parental comprehension of informed consent information using an innovative undergraduate research assistant program compared to consent using the traditional research nurse model. We hypothesize that parental comprehension of the informed consent information process when approached by undergraduate students will be comparable (or not worse) than when consent is obtained by a research nurse.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Masking
SINGLE
Enrollment
12
The standard informed consent process is for research nurses to provide verbal explanations of studies. In the intervention arm trained research students will use DVD's made by the studies principal investigator to explain study information in the informed consent process.
University of Calgary, Alberta Children's Hospital Emergency Department
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Parental understanding of informed consent process using a standardized measurement tool, the Deaconess Informed Consent Comprehension Test (DICCT)
The DICCT is a validated and reliable tool that was developed to assess comprehension of informed consent information among adult study subjects and adapted to measure parental understanding of consent. Parental understanding of the consent process will be measured using a modified Deaconess Informed Consent Comprehension Test (mDICCT), which has previously been used in a pediatric setting. The score on the DICCT will be presented as a mean or median (depending on distribution) with 95% Confidence Intervals (CI's). The appropriate parametric (t-test) or non-parametric test will be used to compare the score on the DICCT between the intervention (student enrollment) and the control group (traditional nurse enrollment).
Time frame: 1 day ED visit
Duration of consent process
Duration of consent process from initial approach to time consent form is obtained or consent refused will be reported for all enrolled patients (median, IQR) as well as for patients in the intervention (student enrollment) and control group (traditional nurse enrollment).
Time frame: 1 day ED visit
Length of stay of the patient in the department
Length of stay in the ED for all patients enrolled in the study, for patients in the intervention group (student enrollment) and in the control group (traditional nurse enrollment), presented as medians with IQR.
Time frame: 1 day ED visit
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