We encourage our reviewers to use the “Question of the Month” feature on the Public Responsibility in Medicine & Research (PRIM&R) web page as a prompt about ethical questions in research. Per the website, “each month we share a new question and accompanying anonymous survey, designed to encourage critical thinking about questions in clinical research and highlight discussion generated by the prior month’s question.” Many questions pertain to whether an IRB would approve a particular research scenario.
While we here at IRB Blog Central had trouble accessing the surveys (they keep popping up as “closed”), we really enjoy reading the discussion of the previous month’s question. (And are a little bummed we just recently found about this feature, even though we’ve been working in human subjects protections for years now.) We are impressed at the diversity of responses and opinions from survey participants. The discussions provide some regulatory background and address some of the relevant ethical considerations. They also highlight something we in the IRB office have long known — the answer to many of the questions we get along the lines of “is this approvable” is very often “it depends.”
So please bookmark this page and set yourself a calendar reminder to look at it every month. It doesn’t take long, and think how impressed our accreditation reviewers will be on the next go-around when you tell them that you make it a point to seek out this type of continuing education each month!