Outcome of a research ethics training workshop among clinicians and scientists in a Nigerian university

In many cases, access to training in research ethics is limited due to a weak social, economic, and health infrastructure. The article describes a project to develop the capacity of academic staff of the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Nigeria to conduct ethically acceptable research involving human participants. The researchers first conducted a series of interviews an a focus group to discover the training needs of the participants, and ended up designing a workshop to help fulfill these needs. To access the effectiveness of the workshop, participants were asked to take a pre and post test, as well as a test one month after the workshop. The researchers found that the participants retained much of the knowledge acquired from the research, and showed an improved knowledge of principles of research ethics, international guidelines and regulations and operations of IRBs.