Are you fed up with all the labor-intensive administrative tasks required for your research? Want to do something about it?

In 2019, multiple PhD candidates from the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Amsterdam UMC initialized the working-group “Ontregel het Onderzoek” (“Deregulate Research”). Inspired by the [Ont]Regel de Zorg (“[De]Regulate Care”) initiative, their aim is to reduce the administrative burden of medical research.

Jeopardizing medical scientific research

The working-group is concerned that high administrative burden and increasing regulatory pressure is unnecessarily disrupting research and no longer contributes to protecting the patient and/or the quality of the data. They want regulations and guidelines from the workplace that are effective and unambiguous to restore a workable field of medical research.

The group is aiming to reduce the regulatory burden by pushing for national policies instead of local interpretation of the rules. The formation of national policies must also include the voices of all stakeholders, they say, including principal investigators, PhD students, and medical professionals.

Inventory of regulatory pressure

The Deregulate Research working-group has investigated the administrative burden in 16 departments within Amsterdam UMC. The inventory revealed regulatory pressure was experienced as high and disproportionate in all investigated departments, and resulted in increased research costs and feelings of frustration. Thirty dispensable but mandatory administrative actions were identified.

Other consequences of regulatory pressure included uncertainty for young researchers and less research done due to lost time.

Achievements against regulatory pressure

Due to the group’s efforts, several processes at Amsterdam UMC have been improved, including the introduction of digital signatures wherever possible and the elimination of duplicate administration.

The group also published an article in Medisch Contact, were featured on Dutch television news, and gave a presentation at the Ready to Connect conference of the Dutch Oncology Research Platform. Their website contains advice and a problem/possible solutions list.

Do you want to help?

Currently, the group is participating in multiple policy working-groups at Amsterdam UMC and other institutes nationally. Would you like to get involved? Please contact us via email.

People involved at Amsterdam UMC:

Suzanne Meiring

Tim Middelburg

Joep van Oostrom

Maarten Pruijt

Niels van der Sangen

Eva Verheij

Koos de Wit

Hein Zelisse

This article was created for Amsterdam UMC - Cancer Center Amsterdam.

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