Consent to Participate
diabetes
DIABETES
All methods were performed in accordance with the Canadian guidelines and regulations (ie, the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans—TCPS 2). Individual consent from patients was waived by the research ethics board prior to the intervention, as the study posed a minimal risk to patients, it was run entirely within the primary care practice, and informing patients about the purpose of the study (ie, increasing diabetes eye screening rates) ahead of the intervention would have contaminated the results. No identifiable information on patients was provided to the external research team. All patients were asked at the end of the trial, during the last contact with patients, whether they consented to sharing their information for research purposes. Patients who refused and those who were not asked for consent for various reasons (eg, they wanted to discontinue the call) were excluded from the study (70/182, 38% of the sample).