The participants in this study will be allocated to either usual care or the MEDIC-treatment, which means that the treatment they receive will be either equivalent to, or superior to, the treatment that they would receive if they did not participate in this study.
Women who consent to the patient preference study will be allocated their preference for either planned VBAC or planned, elective repeat caesarean.
Participants recruited for the dose-response study will be allocated after randomisation to consume either a placebo, 100 IU, 200 IU 400 IU, 800 IU or 1600 IU of alpha tocopherol orally each day for the duration determined by the time-course study.
Participants who meet all study inclusion criteria and consent to participate within the study will be randomly allocated to a treatment group using a stratified process.
Patients that are included in the study will be randomly allocated to the treatment condition (MERIT) or treatment as usual (TAU).
Paramedics working within GWAS who consent to participate in the study will be randomly allocated to one of the three study arms: i-gel, LMAS or control (usual airway practice).
Participants agreeing to take part in the study will be randomly allocated using minimisation to either the intervention group, receiving access to the Internet site, or the usual care group.
Mothers who consent to participate in the study will be randomly allocated immediately after hospital discharge (within 24 h) to one of two groups; intervention (I), or control group (C).
Patients meeting the inclusion criteria and consenting to participate in the study will be randomly allocated in a 1 1 ratio to either (a) oral iron (ferrous sulphate slow-release 2 tablets mane – the most common current practice in the transplant unit) or (b) intravenous iron polymaltose as a 500 mg single dose given within the first 5 days after transplantation.
In line with the procedure of Compas and colleagues [ 9], all siblings who meet the inclusion criteria can take part in the study and will be allocated to the same group.
