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- Contributing as a consumer representative to this kind of research is likely to be similar to that for laboratory-based research, but because the researchers are working with cancer patients, there are additional questions to think about.
- You should make sure that their plans take the patients’ needs and problems into account, and are sensitive to the issues that surround a cancer diagnosis and the experience of cancer treatment. For clinical trials, your work may range from reviewing and commenting on the criteria about who can participate, to reviewing questionnaires or other information to be given, the way information is given and recruitment of and support for trial participants. In this role, it will help if you can imagine what it would be like if you were a participant in clinical research – what sort of information would you be looking for, how will it work in practical terms, what support might you need? Your perspective here can be really useful to make a trial or study a better experience for cancer patients and their families.
- Some researchers will give you plenty of time to consider their research proposal and the documents to be submitted with their grant application. Unfortunately, however, many will only give you a short time in their rush to submit their application by the deadline. If this is the case, try to make the time to understand what the project will be and to make sure that at least the consumer summary is in language which is easy for non-medical people to understand and provides a fair representation of what the researcher is trying to do. If funding is awarded, you should expect to continue as the consumer representative for that project.