[NIFL-HEALTH:2177] Re: Consent and Confidentiality

From: Kim Riley (rileyk@amc.org)
Date: Thu Feb 17 2000 - 16:35:00 EST


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From: "Kim Riley" <rileyk@amc.org>
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Subject: [NIFL-HEALTH:2177] Re: Consent and Confidentiality
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I think the issues of confidentiality and consent are difficult, but I'd say
you're starting out in the right direction.  The only suggestion I would have,
and this is based on our experience recruiting patients from primary care office
settings to participate in our research studies, is to make that last step of the
tutor telling the learner to contact the med student more proactive.  That's an
extra step that the learner has to take, and it may cause you to lose some
potential participants.  Think about having the med student get the list of
interested learners from the tutor (after the tutor has either sent a letter to
or called the learner inviting participation) and make the calls him or herself
to the learner.  Basically, unless the learner tells the tutor he/she is not
interested, the learner will get a call from the med student.  Consent can be
conducted over the phone by the tutor if the learner is interested, or a written
form could be sent in the mail (but then, of course, you have the potential
difficulty of not knowing whether the learner read, and more importantly,
understood the consent).

Dwyoho@aol.com wrote:

> The Mid-Carolina Health Literacy Network is extremely proud to be "off and
> running" with "Mission HealthLit:  Connecting Health Practicitioners,
> Educators, Business Leaders and Policy Makers", thanks to Pfizer's generous
> support.  Soon, we expect to have a website with some details to share with
> all.
>
> Getting started, we have run smack into the issue of confidentiality and
> consent.  I'd like to post the scenario and ask for your advice:
>
> A third-year medical student is developing a take-home multimedia information
> packet on diabetes.  She has asked our help in getting input from low
> literacy adults with diabetes as she works on the packet's contents and
> format.
>
> We thought we would provide her with a list of our volunteer tutors and their
> phone numbers.  She will randomly call some of them to ask if they are aware
> of whether their learning partner has diabetes.  If by chance she finds a
> tutor who knows his/her learner is diabetic, she will then discuss with the
> tutor whether the tutor would be comfortable placing a call to the learner.
> If so, the tutor would tell the learner about the project, and invite the
> learner to call the medical student to participate in a short, oral
> questionnaire on the phone about the take-home packet.
>
> Reactions, please.  We have a raging debate gong on in our office.  Many
> thanks.
>
> Deborah W. Yoho
> Chief Executive Officer
> Greater Columbia Literacy Council
> 921 Woodrow Street
> Columbia, SC  29205
> 803/765-2555   dwyoho@aol.com



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