Consent Form
Information for Participants the Doctors' e-cohort Study
What is the Doctors’ e-cohort study?
The Doctors' e-Cohort Study is a longitudinal population-based study established to examine factors influencing the career decisions of doctors and medical students, and the recruitment and retention of doctors in metropolitan, rural and remote regions of Australia. Funded by the Australian Research Council in partnership with Queensland Health and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the study uses innovative information technology techniques to follow cohorts of medical students and graduate doctors through their careers over a 5-year period. The study aims to inform education and workforce policies relevant to the medical profession. (Further information about the study’s aims and objectives, its funding bodies and its research collaborators and investigators can be found on the Doctors’ e-cohort study website at http://doctors.e-cohort.net/)
Who is invited to participate in the study?
All medical practitioners living or working in Australia and all students studying medicine in Australia are invited to participate in the study. This includes doctors who have chosen temporarily or permanently not to practise medicine, and also students who start, but who do not complete, their university studies in Medicine.
What does participation in the study involve?
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annual electronic survey
If you agree to participate in the study, you will be asked to complete an annual electronic survey that seeks information related to your basic demographics, patterns of employment, workplace environment, job satisfaction, personal health and lifestyle issues, and stress-related conditions to explore how these factors impact upon the recruitment and retention of doctors.
Each year for the next five years, you will receive an email asking you to complete an electronic survey. Depending on your specific responses, the electronic survey should take between 20 – 40 minutes to complete. We may also approach you infrequently, via email, seeking your interest to participate in a small additional survey looking at a specific theme in relation to workforce and recruitment issues. Your participation in any or all of these surveys is voluntary and you may withdraw without prejudice at any time.
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your personal information
We ask you to provide us with some of your personal contact details and those of a secondary contact person. The reason for this is to maintain contact with you over the years of the study. Occasionally we will send emails to remind you about your survey and to check the currency of your email. Your personal details will only be accessed by research staff authorised to do so by the Study Director, Dr. Marie-Louise Dick. At the completion of the study, these details will be archived.We also ask you to provide your medical registraion number or your student number. The sole reason for this is to allow us to indentify non-medical practitioners who inadvertently register with this study. Nonetheless, your decision to provide this information is entirely voluntary.
The information that you provide in your survey will be stored using an identification number, which will help us link your responses over time. Researchers working on the study will be given de-identified data to analyse and any publications that arise from the study will report aggregate data only. All data will be maintained on a secure, password-protected server and will be retained for five years after completion of the study and publication of results, in accordance with standard research procedures.
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study findings
We will provide feedback to you through electronic newsletters and will post professional and scientific publications (or links to these) on the study website.
This study has been granted ethical clearance by the Behavioural and Social Sciences Ethical Review Committee of The University of Queensland in accordance with the National Health and Medical Research Council’s guidelines (Approval Number: 2007000349). If you would like to speak to an officer of the University not involved in this study, you may contact the Ethics Officer, Mr Michael Tse, on 07 3365 3924 or m.tse@uq.edu.au.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Marie-Louise Dick |