Brittney Schichter

Lead, Advanced Care Planning, PHSA.

Brittney Schichter

Brittney Schichter is the Lead, Advanced Care Planning at BC’s Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) and is also the ethicist for the BC Children’s and Women’s Hospital REB. She has nearly a decade of experience in the health research sector, advising researchers and administrators in research ethics, research privacy, and patient-oriented research. Brittney holds a Bachelor of Health Sciences from the University of Calgary and a Juris Doctor from the University of Victoria, and is a non-practicing member of the Law Society of Alberta.

All Sessions by Brittney Schichter

  • Wednesday, May 1


  • 15:10  - 15:40
    SESSION KEYWORDS: Community Collaboration, Patient-Oriented Research

    SESSION ABSTRACT

    Purposeful knowledge dissemination planning is a central tenet of a patient-oriented or community-based approach to research. Granting agencies, governments, and healthcare organizations are becoming increasingly more attentive to the ethical considerations that exist alongside knowledge dissemination work. This has resulted not only in a need for support for many researchers who might have less experience in this area, but for research ethics boards who may need support in identifying and inquiring about ethical issues related to knowledge dissemination. We developed a tool to support the work of research ethics boards and conducted a validation process (this was presented at CAREB in 2022). REB expert input resulted in very helpful feedback that suggested we design two separate guidance tools. The first tool, which is heavily based on the original tool that underwent validation, is meant to support research ethics boards with identifying and inquiring about possible gaps in knowledge dissemination plans as stated in research ethics applications, that could impact whether proposed research projects are ethically sound. The second tool is meant to assist researchers and trainees in creating ethical knowledge dissemination plans to support them with closing the loop and sharing back findings with knowledge users and community partners. Our goal is to strengthen knowledge dissemination planning at the research planning stage, prompt discussion about what makes an ethical knowledge dissemination plan, and encourage researchers to think deeper about disseminating the results of their work. We would also like to report back on the interesting progression of and learnings from this project, as it has been an iterative process, and has changed over time based on knowledge user feedback. It is a true example of developing a knowledge translation support product with the engagement of various knowledge users and audiences in mind.
    Sessions

  • Thursday, May 2


  • 15:20  - 16:05
    SESSION KEYWORDS: CIHR, Minimal Consent, Clinical Research

    SESSION ABSTRACT

    We return to CAREB to present the first draft of the Pan-Canadian Minimal Consent for Clinical Research, the core objective of the CIHR Pan-Canadian Minimal Consent project: the production of a template that outlines a list of minimal requirements for research consent that, along with the additional required elements for submission of a complete research package, can be used by TCPS-compliant Canadian research ethics boards (REBs) to document the informed consent process thus facilitating the harmonization of ethics review of clinical studies. We again seek CAREB input as this community of practice is instrumental to the project’s success. Clinical studies that involve multiple hospitals or research programs require ethics approval in each applicable jurisdiction. Requirements for ethics approval differ among institutional and provincial REBs, including requirements for informed consent, a key element of the ethics submission. The requests for changes in the materials are at times complex and cause delays, due to inconsistencies across REB requirements. Informed consent forms are getting longer but are not leading to increased awareness of risk on the part of the participant. Further, participants often report dissatisfaction with these documents and have called for simplification of informed consent forms where possible. The scope for this project is the informed consent requirements for clinical studies involving human participants (clinical trials and observational studies) that are not minimal risk. This project is co- lead by the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group and COVID-19 Network of Clinical Trials Networks and CIHR’s Ethics Office. It follows the methods of a previous successful project to create a core set of elements for documents used to obtain participant consent for human genomics research in Canada which is now published in CMAJ. The CIHR Pan-Canadian Minimal Consent Project is led by a small team (the authors of this presentation) that is guided by an Advisory Group of experts from across Canada including REB administrators, research ethics experts, researchers, and patients. The second project deliverable that we seek to present at CAREB is the first draft of the Minimal Consent. After conducting a gap analysis and discussing it in various fora, the team proceeded to identify, from a participant’s point of view, what requirements are necessary to help making a decision regarding the active participation on a research. Elements incidental to the protection of the participant were left out from the draft consent template and now are part of its companion, the research package. After incorporating CAREB’s input we will have a new meeting of the Advisory Committee and a series of consultations with patients and their representatives and other stakeholders. We expect to have a pre-final draft uploaded for public consultation later this year. After reflecting on all input, we intend to submit the template for publication by early 2025.
    Sessions




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Brittney Schichter