Briefing note for BSO Board Health and Social Care Research Ethics Committees at the Office for Research Ethics Committees Northern Ireland (ORECNI) at BSO achieve full External Quality Accreditation The ORECNI is the NI Centre for health service research ethics review and works closely with other UK stakeholders (The Health Research Authority England and the Scottish and Welsh Health Boards) to deliver a national ethical review service for the research community, which works with service users The HRA established, in 2007, a three year rolling accreditation programme in order to audit UK RECs against agreed standards as detailed in Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Governance Arrangements for Research Ethics Committees (GAfREC). RECs are issued with an audit decision full accreditation, accreditation – with conditions (low risk non-compliance identified requiring an action plan) or provisional accreditation (high and low risk issues requiring an action plan).It produces bi-annual accreditation reports. In preparation for external accreditation I, as Head of the ORECNIs, undertake Quality Control checks on RECs against agreed standards. This includes an annual meeting observation of a REC meeting. I am pleased to inform the BSO Board as the HSC REC Appointing Authority that both HSC RECs A and B have achieved full external accreditation from the HRA recently and I enclose the letters and reports produced. Pivotal to this was the BSO Equality Unit running Equality and Diversity Training with the committee memberships in February this year. This people first approach was acknowledged as outstanding. It was also noted that the service improvements introduced in the service had greatly improved timelines for ethical approval for customers. Only 1 in 4 RECs in the UK achieve full accreditation at first external audit so it is particularly pleasing to know that all HSC RECS have attained full quality accreditation. I wish to thank my staff for their excellent work and the Committee members for their commitment to the ethics service.
Briefing note for BSO Board Health and Social Care Research Ethics Committees at the Office for Research Ethics Committees Northern Ireland (ORECNI) at BSO achieve full External Quality Accreditation The ORECNI is the NI Centre for health service research ethics review and works closely with other UK stakeholders (The Health Research Authority England and the Scottish and Welsh Health Boards) to deliver a national ethical review service for the research community, which works with service users The HRA established, in 2007, a three year rolling accreditation programme in order to audit UK RECs against agreed standards as detailed in Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Governance Arrangements for Research Ethics Committees (GAfREC). RECs are issued with an audit decision – full accreditation, accreditation with conditions (low risk non-compliance identified requiring an action plan) or provisional accreditation (high and low risk issues requiring an action plan).It produces bi-annual accreditation reports. In preparation for external accreditation I, as Head of the ORECNIs, undertake Quality Control checks on RECs against agreed standards. This includes an annual meeting observation of a REC meeting. I am pleased to inform the BSO Board as the HSC REC Appointing Authority that both HSC RECs A and B have achieved full external accreditation from the HRA recently and I enclose the letters and reports produced. Pivotal to this was the BSO Equality Unit running Equality and Diversity Training with the committee memberships in February this year. This people first approach was acknowledged as outstanding. It was also noted that the service improvements introduced in the service had greatly improved timelines for ethical approval for customers. Only 1 in 4 RECs in the UK achieve full accreditation at first external audit so it is particularly pleasing to know that all HSC RECS have attained full quality accreditation. I wish to thank my staff for their excellent work and the Committee members for their commitment to the ethics service.