swissethics publishes four updated templates of the patient information and consent forms for research participants in the context of research with persons: The patient information and consent forms for clinical trials and non-clinical trials are made available to the participants themselves or - if they are lacking capacity - to their legal representatives (or relatives). All documents are available in all three national languages.

A fundamental starting point for the revision was to improve comprehensibility in general and to focus on the most essential in the short form. The short form has been completely redesigned based on linguistic preliminary work carried out by the team of Dr. Felix Steiner, ZHAW Winterthur. The short form is now also intended to serve as a guideline for the oral explanations by the investigators. In the long form, many details on data protection have been added, while other chapters have been fundamentally revised. In addition, gender-appropriate language has been adopted. The structuring of the short and long form, partly in subchapters, is also intended to contribute to improve the general comprehensibility.

The use of the revised models is mandatory after a transitional period of 3 months.