Chiropractic practice can generate rich information about patients’ conditions, treatment and outcomes, and patient data may be used for purposes other than providing care, including research, service evaluation and clinical audit. While all uses of patient data have ethical considerations to take into account, if a research project is to be undertaken, Research Ethics Committee approval is needed for the project being proposed, and this must be obtained before commencing any data collection; it is never expected that applications for ethics approval will be reviewed and considered retrospectively unless exceptional circumstances exist.
In this excerpt from Issue 27 of the RCC’s newsletter Articulate, Director of Research Gay Swait PhD FRCC, explores the ethical issues around patient data collection and use.