Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 8, 2026

Observational Study Protocol for Repeated Clinical Examination and Critical Care Ultrasonography Within the Simple Intensive Care Studies
Published on: January 16, 2019
Observational protocol
1Institute of Bioethics, A. Gemelli School of Medicine, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy.
Abstract:
An observational study (OS) is a non-interventional/non-experimental survey. In the OSs, the investigator observes and evaluates results of ongoing medical care without 'controlling' the therapy beyond normal medical practice. An OS is aimed: 1. to the evaluation of the safety profile of any medical procedure (drug, device, surgical procedure, radiotherapy, diagnostics, etc.) under the normal conditions of use and on great numbers of patients, 2. for close examinations on the effectiveness in the clinical practice, 3. for the verification of the prescriptive appropriateness and 4. for pharmacoeconomic evaluations. For their characteristics OPs don't involve additional risks for the patients to which the best conditions of clinical assistance are offered. Consequently they do not need further or different ethical procedures/ requirements in comparison to the experimental clinical studies Particularly it is necessary to avoid that an interventional trial could be introduced as an OP.
Related Concept Videos
Naturalistic Observations
Data Collection by Observations
An astronomer viewing the motion and brightness of stars in the sky and recording the data is an example of observational data collection. A botanist recording...
Observational Studies
There are three types of observational studies – Prospective, retrospective, and cross-sectional.
Prospective Study
Prospective studies, also known as longitudinal or cohort studies, are carried out by collecting future data from groups sharing similar characteristics. One example of...
Blind Procedures
Data Collection by Experiments
An example of the experimental method is a public clinical trial...
The Scientific Method

