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HealthWatch student prize for the evaluation of clinical research protocols

The competition for 2011 is now closed - see below for the list of prize winners

The annual HealthWatch student prize for evaluation of clinical research protocols is generously supported by a grant from the Medico-Legal Society. It is open to medical and nursing / midwifery students.

In each class (medical students and nursing / midwifery students) there is a first prize of £500 and five runner-up prizes of £100.

The competition consists of four protocols for hypothetical clinical trials. Your task is to rank them by giving a rating =1 for trial that you consider is most likely to provide a reliable answer to the stated aim of the trial, and 4 for that least likely to do so.

You are assessing the quality of the protocols, not the desirability of the aim. Each protocol starts (as it should) with a "Scientific background" summarising previous relevant research. Entrants should assume this is work correctly cited from reliable sources.

Don't have Adobe Reader? It's free to download. Click here to go to the Adobe website and download the reader. The link opens in a new window.

Prize winners in the 2011 competition were

Medical students:

First prize: Derek Ho, Imperial College

runners up

Jennifer Johnson, Warwick University
Mark Loughrey,Penisula Medical School
Asad Salman Mahmood, Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry
Alastair Rankin, Glasgow University
Benjamin David Williams, Peninsula Medical School

Nursing and Midwifery students

Highly commended: Sarah-Jane Bateman, Nottingham University

You are invited to look at the protocols used in previous years for this competition. The documents will open in a new window and are in Adobe Reader format (.pdf).