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The Departmental Ethics Chair and UCL Research Ethics Committee [ethics@ucl.ac.uk] must be informed, immediately of any complaint or unforeseen incident, for any research project.
Handling Complaints
- The Study PI must inform their Research Departmental Ethics Chair and the UCL Research Ethics Committee Chair of the complaint and their draft response to it. This is in order to ensure that all complaints are all handled in a similar manner. Details noted on the information provided to research participants for the study (e.g. information sheets and consent forms etc.) should be provided when notifying the Departmental Ethics Chair and the UCL Research Ethics Committee of the complaint.
- The acknowledgement of the complaint to the complainant should be sent by the Study PI, never their junior staff. The Study PI who should continue to involve the Research Department Ethics Chair throughout the process.
- The acknowledgement must state that if the complainant is not content with the response, then they can contact the relevant Departmental Ethics Chair or the UCL Research Ethics Committee. The contact details for escalating the complaint should be provided to the complainant
Handling Unforeseen Incidents
Regardless of whether a study participant makes a complaint or not, any unforeseen incident should be immediately reported to the Departmental Ethics Chair and the UCL Research Ethics Committee – even if such incident is unlikely to have been triggered by the study protocol.
- The Study PI must inform their Departmental Ethics Chair and the UCL Research Ethics Committee Chair of (i) what happened; (ii) their response at the time of the matter; (iii) the contact details and other information noted on the information sheets provided to research participants ; (iv) the consent procedure for the study.
