View from the research and development office

English NHS trusts are obliged to implement research governance for all NHS health and social care research.1 The NHS trust that I work for, which funded the research highlighted by Jones and Bamford,2 sees research as integral to providing high quality health and social care services, and research governance is paramount to our research strategy.

Research involving NHS patients or service users should be reviewed by the NHS research ethics committee and be of appropriate scientific quality. If a research protocol changes, then it needs to be reassessed for the new methods and research ethics. Research not meeting these ethical and quality standards can represent a potential risk to patients, researchers, and wider NHS research, as shown by the Alder Hey and other inquiries.3^–5 Trusts therefore need to implement training for researchers, together with governance …