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  • Preclinical & Laboratory Foundations Learning Path
  • Phase I – First-in-Human Trials Learning Path
  • Phase II & III – Efficacy & Pivotal Trials Learning Path
  • Clinical Trials Foundation PathNew
  • Regulatory Submission & Approval

About

The Human Participants & Ethics Approval Course is designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of ethical principles and approval processes required for research involving human participants, ensuring protection of rights, dignity, and wellbeing while maintaining regulatory compliance.
This course covers key areas including informed consent, research ethics principles (respect for persons, beneficence, and justice), ethics committee/IRB/REC approval processes, risk assessment, confidentiality, data protection, vulnerable populations, and responsible research conduct. It also highlights governance requirements, protocol amendments, adverse event reporting, and ethical decision-making in human-subjects research. Upon completion, learners receive a certification demonstrating competency in human research ethics and approval processes.

Who Should Enrol?

  • Clinical Researchers and Investigators
  • Clinical Trial Assistants (CTAs)
  • Clinical Research Associates (CRAs)
  • Regulatory Affairs Professionals
  • Healthcare Professionals involved in research
  • Pharmaceutical and CRO staff
  • Ethics Committee members and coordinators
  • Life science, nursing, pharmacy, and medical graduates
📢 Every purchase also includes our FREE companion Human Participants & Ethics Approval eBook, designed to help you apply principles in real-world clinical trial settings.

What you will learn

Understand the fundamentals of human research ethics, including informed consent, autonomy, and participant rights.

Learn key ethical frameworks such as respect for persons, beneficence, and justice, and how they apply to research involving humans.

Gain knowledge of ethics committee/IRB/REC review processes, approvals, amendments, and regulatory requirements for human-subjects research.

Develop understanding of data protection, confidentiality, risk assessment, vulnerable populations, and safe research conduct.

Course Syllabus

  1. Why research ethics exists
  2. Historical foundations: Nuremberg, Helsinki, Belmont
  3. The Belmont principles
  4. Core ethical requirements
  5. Who oversees research ethics

  1. What informed consent is
  2. Required elements of consent
  3. Doing consent well
  4. Special consent situations
  5. Common consent pitfalls

  1. Weighing risk and benefit
  2. Types of risk
  3. Risk minimisation
  4. Privacy and confidentiality
  5. Keeping benefits honest

  1. Who is vulnerable
  2. Vulnerable groups and safeguards
  3. Capacity, assent and surrogates
  4. Power and coercion
  5. Equitable recruitment

  1. The purpose of ethics approval
  2. The ethics committee
  3. The submission package
  4. Levels of review
  5. Possible committee decisions

  1. Ethics as an ongoing process
  2. Continuing review
  3. Amendments
  4. Safety and adverse-event reporting
  5. Compliance and deviations

  1. Principles across contexts
  2. Secondary data and records
  3. Biobanking and genetics
  4. Global and cross-border research
  5. Digital and social-media research

  1. 📘 Bonus: Human Participants & Ethics Approval eBook (Free with purchase)

Course Benefits

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Free eBook

Get our exclusive eBook with every purchase - a complete companion guide to the course, yours to keep forever

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CPD Points

Gain Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Points accredited by The Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom, usable towards the distance-learning element of relevant schemes.

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Certificate of Completion

Receive a Whitehall Training certificate on passing the final assessment, evidencing your competence for audits, appraisals and CVs.

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Practical + Scenario-Based

Learn through real-world case studies, decision frameworks and checklists you can apply immediately in your own research environment.

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Self-Paced Online Learning

Study anytime, anywhere, at your own pace, with bite-sized modules and built-in knowledge checks.

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Expert-Reviewed Content

Material aligned to recognised international standards and codes, written and reviewed to a professional, practitioner-grade level.

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Assessment + Knowledge Checks

Reinforce learning with per-module knowledge checks and a final scenario-based assessment.


Our Certified Customers

novartis
NHS
takeda
roche
dhl

Learner Rating & Reviews

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RC

Working with Whitehall training for the last two years of partnership has been a very successful experience – I have fast access to all the GCP course...

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I have finalised the demo for the ICH-GCP E6 R3 refresher course. Overall, I liked the content and the interface. I also want to thank Whitehall Train...