Attitudes of health-care providers towards research with newborn babies.

CONTEXT

By providing information and possibly shaping parents' preferences, health-care providers are thought to play a critical role in parental decisions to enroll their infants in research. Yet, little is known about health-care providers' beliefs about research with newborns. Previous studies suggest that parents and health-care providers are often at odds regarding attitudes towards research.

OBJECTIVE

To examine the attitudes of health-care providers concerning the acceptability of research with newborn babies and the degree of research-related risk to which they would be willing to expose their own infant. These findings were compared with a previous study of parental attitudes.

DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: A survey (pretested questionnaire with 20 scaled items and five case scenarios) of 50 doctors and 64 nurses conducted in a large tertiary care center in western Canada.

RESULTS

Study limitations were a response rate of 64.5% among nurses but only 22% among physicians. Both doctors and nurses were strongly supportive of research with newborns, but nurses were more averse to exposing infants to risk. Only 76.0% of nurses, compared to 92.2% of physicians, agreed that informed consent should be sought for all forms of research. When results were compared with parental perceptions, health-care providers were more likely to believe that research should be conducted for the good of all babies. Parents were generally less aware of the existence of an approval process for research in general. In responding to hypothetical scenarios with risk and direct benefit, parents were less willing to enroll their infants than were health-care providers. Approximately 30% of both groups would be willing to enroll their infants in a study involving moderate risk and no direct benefit.

CONCLUSIONS

Views of nurses, physicians, and parents regarding research with newborns are different. Overall, there is support for research; however, nurses are more likely to never enroll their own baby and enroll babies into minor studies without consent.