COLLEGE OF HEALTH SCIENCES – Seven faculty members here attended the Training-Workshop on Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Ethical Review Committees (ERC) held at the Board Room of the Mariano Marcos Memorial Hospital and Medical Center (MMMH&MC), June 14-15.

Josephine Ceria, Julie Damaso, Myrel Fabi, and Marvin Lutrania of the nursing department; professors Cheryll Didi Nellie Obra and Ryan Dean Sucgang, physical therapy department; and Rhian Jaymar Ramil, pharmacy department, learned to develop SOPs on activities undertaken by the ERC for quality assurance of research outputs, especially since the area of research and experimentation using human subjects is of important concern at present.  Extension Director Marivic Alimbuyugen also joined the training. Other participants came from MMMH&MC, UNP, and DMMMSU.

The Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (PCHRD), Philippine Health Research Ethics Board (PHREB), and Region 1 Health Research and Development Consortium (R1HRDC) spearheaded the affair.

The two-day activity focused mainly on lectures and workshops on preparing the SOP matrix and flow charts, and completing a full SOP format. Functions of the ERC and guidelines on constituting it were also discussed.  Dr. Marita V. T. Reyes, National Ethics Committee chair and PHREB co-chair, and Prof. Edlyn Jimenez, National Institute of Health Research faculty member and UP Manila Research Ethics Board secretariat coordinator served as resource speakers.

“The workshop was of great help to us in the academic community because we learned much about how ERC should work. We are now more equipped to look deeper into students’ researches. Because they deal with people, students should be very careful in implementing their research work,” Josephine Ceria said. She expressed the need for MMSU in general and CHS in particular to start planning the establishment of an institutional ERC as well as the appointment of core members.