Build Trials Right with Equator

Clinician Initiated Trials, Can They Work?

Clinical trials are done to explore whether a medical strategy, treatment, or device is safe, effective, and economical. Trials also explore which treatments work best for specific illnesses or populations and which ones don’t work at all. It seems clinicians and patients working together could figure this out and make a trial work. However, there are very few clinician led trials in primary care and even fewer that are run by patients.

Patients have the experience of living in the trenches, it could even be said they have all the skin in the game. So how can Evidence Live help equip an inexperienced but motivated team to run a successful trial or to be part of a collaboration that does?

It is increasingly clear that being a doctor or academic is insufficient training to develop, or know, the difference between good research that is well reported and pseudo-science that is well marketed. Equator research reporting guidelines and education can be the difference between research that is buried unfinished and a well reported trial.

You will learn about the All Trials Initiative to lead all researchers to register clinical trials and the COMPare group that checks that trials that are published report all outcomes, primary and secondary. Going to the Equator workshop will teach you how to all do this when you plan your trial.  These groups will raise awareness, increase research transparency and protect public health.

Equator Workshop June 21, 2016

The workshop will be run by proven trialists and scientists including Doug Altman, Gary Collins, Ben Goldacre, Jo Silva, Iveta Simera, and Elizabeth Wager.

As students we would use Equator research guidelines to shape how we built our trials and later for how we reported what we found. Equator’s goal for this workshop is to equip clinician researchers to make research that is effective, economical usable, and fit for purpose. They point out that public funds are wasted because of bad reporting or non-reporting of research, and then the goodwill of research participants is betrayed, and patients’ care is compromised.

There will be talks, discussion and several practical (and fun!) exercises highlighting:

• How ambiguous and incomplete reporting misleads clinicians and harm patients
• How good planning, design and methods help with your writing
• How reporting guidelines and other EQUATOR resources can help researchers, editors and peer reviewers work as a team to improve the literature.
• How to sail through methodological and statistical review unscathed
• Learn from medical publications professionals and communications experts to make your message soar.

Click here for more information.  Register soon as places are capped to ensure optimal small-group learning.

Dr Amy Price