Hi all,

My research group is very blood based, so we need a lot of blood donations from healthy adult controls.

We had new ethics drawn up in the last year, and thus have to be careful how we go about getting a blood donation. It's sometimes a little vague who you can ask, and what to do when someone volunteers who isn't consented.

Which is the main problem for me - I asked if I could have a blood sample on Tuesday, and someone volunteered and I only realised half way through the blood donation she wasn't consented and made a note. I spoke to a few others today who seem happy to donate, so I went to ask the lecturer who's involved in the ethics and he was quite abrupt about how to go about the consenting, even though I just asked if we could have some spare consent forms to sort things out.

Now he wants to come to our lab meeting on Monday, and I'm terrified that a) I'm going to get into massive trouble and b) the group is going to get into massive trouble because of it and we'll lose our ethics

I've emailed the group explaining what I know of the situation and apologising in advance if I've caused any problems but really don't know what else I can do

Personally I'd say the main issue is consent for the analysis here, since there was explicit consent (although not written) to the taking of the blood sample. It's certainly not good practice, but it shouldn't be fatal.