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Suggested Citation:"Accreditation Versus Certification." Institute of Medicine. 2001. Preserving Public Trust: Accreditation and Human Research Participant Protection Programs. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10085.
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Page 43
Suggested Citation:"Accreditation Versus Certification." Institute of Medicine. 2001. Preserving Public Trust: Accreditation and Human Research Participant Protection Programs. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10085.
×
Page 44

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INTRODUCTION, BACKGROUND, AND DEFINITIONS 43 toring is incorporated into NCQA standards but is not a central theme of the proposed PRIM&R standards, in which it is mentioned in only one documentation standard. The committee believes that adverse event reporting and research monitoring should be central elements of the system as a whole and, hence, also of any accreditation process intended to improve that system. Accreditation Versus Certification The committee uses the term “accreditation” to refer to a process described in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3. That process is centered on an organization rather than individuals. The committee uses the term “certification” to refer to an individual. The National Association of IRB Managers, for example, has offered a certification examination since 1995, and the Applied Research Ethics National Association recently has launched a certification program for individuals who staff or chair IRBs (National Association of IRB Managers, 2001; PRIM&R, 2001a). Certification is offered only to those with demonstrated experience and entails passing a test of knowledge about protection of human research participants. Certification has been discussed for investigators who conduct research involving human participants. For example, the government of the United Kingdom licenses those doing animal research and research on in vitro fertilization and embryo research. In the United States, however, no structure to carry out national certification of U.S. investigators exists. NIH and several universities (e.g., Case Western Reserve University and the University of Rochester), for example, have recently adopted requirements that investigators take a World Wide Web-based interactive test that demonstrates knowledge of human research protections before they can seek IRB approval of a protocol (Case Western Reserve University, 2001; Chadwick and Liders, 2000; Office of Human Subjects Research, National Institutes of Health, 2001). A national certification requirement for investigators, however, would be a major step entailing the development of a substantial infrastructure. For this reason, the committee does not consider the issue of certification in this report.

INTRODUCTION, BACKGROUND, AND DEFINITIONS 44

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Amid increasing concern for patient safety and the shutdown of prominent research operations, the need to improve protections for individuals who volunteer to participate in research has become critical. Preserving Public Trust: Accreditation and Human Research Participant Protection Programs considers the possible impact of creating an accreditation system to raise the performance of local protection mechanisms. In the United States, the system for human research participant protections has centered on the Institutional Review Board (IRB); however, this report envisions a broader system with multiple functional elements.

In this context, two draft sets of accreditation standards are reviewed (authored by Public Responsibility in Medicine & Research and the National Committee for Quality Assurance) for their specific content in core areas, as well as their objectivity and validity as measurement tools. The recommendations in the report support the concept of accreditation as a quality improvement strategy, suggesting that the model should be initially pursued through pilot testing of the proposed accreditation programs.

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