REMB VI holds SOP workshop on research ethics

The Regional Ethics Monitoring Board (REMB) VI’s Regional Committee on Information Dissemination, Training, and Advocacy (RCIDTA) held a workshop on Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for Northern Iloilo State University’s (NISU) research and extension unit members.

The workshop is the final activity of a series of trainings mandated by the Philippine Health Research Ethics Board (PHREB) for research ethics committee members. Resource persons are Dr. Fred P. Guillergan and Dr. Edna A. Medez who are both PHREB-recognized trainers and accreditors. The major goal of the activity is to enhance NISU’s research SOPs in preparation for operationalization and application to PHREB accreditation.

The morning session of the first day consisted of lecture covering topics such as overviews of proper SOPs in detail as well as the PHREB Accreditation Program. The committee identified challenges during the lectures including inconsistent SOP format and intra-SOP inconsistencies, specifically on policy on timeline versus workflow, section on responsible person versus responsible persons in the workflow and the detailed description, definition of terms, and form numbers and titles. Subsequently, the resource persons advised the participants to adhere to the 2020 Philippine Health Research Ethics Board (PHREB) Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) Workbook.

The afternoon session was the workshop proper on the assessment of the completeness of SOPs and their format. As such, a draft SOP was presented and participants had to correct errors and present them on day 2.

The second day was marked with the participants’ presentation of their corrected SOPs plus other exercises about checking the intra-SOP consistencies and writing and editing the SOPs. (KJGagajena/DOSTVI-KMU)