Exciting News – Our First Published Paper!

Published on Thursday, 11 September 2025

We're excited to share that our very first research paper has been published! 🎉

The study looked at how parents and staff felt about using a “verbal opt-out” approach to consent in the neoGASTRIC trial, which involved premature babies in neonatal care. This approach means parents are given information and can choose to say no, rather than having to formally sign up. We found that many parents and staff supported this idea when the trial was low-risk, but timing and communication were really important — especially for families in the first hours after birth. These findings will help guide how consent is handled in future neonatal studies.

A big thank you to Tracy Mitchell and Kerry Woolfall for their hard work, and to everyone who made this possible.

You can read the full paper here: Parent and practitioner experiences of opt-out consent in neonatal intensive care: a mixed methods study within a trial | ADC Fetal & Neonatal Edition