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The ethical issues regarding consent to clinical trials with pre-term or sick neonates: a systematic review (framework synthesis) of the empirical research

Wilman, E; Megone, C; Oliver, S; Duley, L; Gyte, G; Wright, JM; (2015) The ethical issues regarding consent to clinical trials with pre-term or sick neonates: a systematic review (framework synthesis) of the empirical research. Trials , 16 , Article 502. 10.1186/s13063-015-0957-x. Green open access

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Abstract

Background: Conducting clinical trials with pre-term or sick infants is important if care for this population is to be underpinned by sound evidence. Yet approaching parents at this difficult time raises challenges for the obtaining of valid informed consent to such research. This study asked: what light does the empirical literature cast on an ethically defensible approach to the obtaining of informed consent in perinatal clinical trials? / Methods: A systematic search identified 49 studies. Analysis began by applying philosophical frameworks which were then refined in light of the concepts emerging from empirical studies to present a coherent picture of a broad literature. / Results: Between them, studies addressed the attitudes of both parents and clinicians concerning consent in neonatal trials; the validity of the consent process in the neonatal research context; and different possible methods of obtaining consent. / Conclusions: Despite a variety of opinions among parents and clinicians there is a strongly and widely held view that it is important that parents do give or decline consent for neonatal participation in trials. However, none of the range of existing consent processes reviewed by the research is satisfactory. A significant gap is evaluation of the widespread practice of emergency ‘assent’, in which parents assent or refuse their baby’s participation as best they can during the emergency and later give full consent to ongoing participation and follow-up. Emergency assent has not been evaluated for its acceptability, how such a process would deal with bad outcomes such as neonatal death between assent and consent, or the extent to which late parental refusal might bias results. This review of a large number of empirical papers, while not making fundamental changes, has refined and developed the conceptual framework from philosophy for examining informed consent in this context.

Type: Article
Title: The ethical issues regarding consent to clinical trials with pre-term or sick neonates: a systematic review (framework synthesis) of the empirical research
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1186/s13063-015-0957-x
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13063-015-0957-x
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © Wilman et al. 2015. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Keywords: Research, Ethics, Pre-term/sick neonates, Parents, Clinicians, Consent, Validity, Competence, Voluntariness, Information
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1508146
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