Guidelines for local research ethics committees: distinguishing between patient and population research in the Multicentre Research Project.

A multicentre population research study was undertaken, involving ethical approval from 28 local research ethics committees. The major problems encountered were delays, which fell into three categories: requests to complete separate application forms, delay in processing applications and additional requests for patient and consultant consent. We examine these sources of delay in the context of the recently published DoH guidelines for local research ethics committees. Our findings reveal that there is not only an absence of adequate guidelines for multicentre research studies but that the new guidelines for local research ethics committees fail to distinguish between patient research and the population study.