{"entity":{"id":"jenny-donovan","kind":"person","name":"Jenny Donovan","aka":[],"tldr":"The Bristol social scientist who worked out how to recruit men into a trial that asked them to accept a coin toss between surgery, radiotherapy and doing nothing, and then measured honestly what each did to their lives.","summary":"Jenny Donovan is Professor of Social Medicine at the University of Bristol and was co-lead of ProtecT with Freddie Hamdy and Athene Lane. Her contribution was methodological and is now used across British trials: the QuinteT approach, which studies how clinicians actually describe a randomised comparison to a patient, finds the places where the description makes one arm sound like the sensible choice, and fixes them. Without it ProtecT would not have randomised 1,643 men into a comparison that included no immediate treatment at all.\n\nShe is also first author of the trial's patient-reported outcomes papers, which are the part of ProtecT that most changes a conversation in clinic: at six years, moderate to severe urinary incontinence was reported by 13 in 100 men after prostatectomy, 5 after radiotherapy and 8 on active monitoring, and moderate or severe erectile dysfunction by 50, 36 and 40 respectively. Those are the numbers NICE prints in box 2 of NG131.","asOf":"2026-09-25","links":[{"label":"University of Bristol research information","url":"https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/persons/jenny-l-donovan"}],"tags":["prostate","trialist","uk"],"related":["freddie-hamdy"],"cancers":["prostate","prostate-low-risk","prostate-intermediate-risk"],"sections":["surgery","radiation"],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":["bristol-haematology-oncology-centre"],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":["protect"],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"role":"Professor of Social Medicine, Bristol Population Health Science Institute, University of Bristol","institutionId":"bristol-haematology-oncology-centre","specialisms":["Recruitment to difficult randomised trials","Patient-reported outcomes","Qualitative research inside trials"],"profiles":[{"label":"University of Bristol research information","url":"https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/persons/jenny-l-donovan"}],"papers":[{"title":"Patient-reported outcomes after monitoring, surgery, or radiotherapy for prostate cancer","journal":"New England Journal of Medicine","year":2016,"doi":"10.1056/NEJMoa1606221"},{"title":"Fifteen-year outcomes after monitoring, surgery, or radiotherapy for prostate cancer","journal":"New England Journal of Medicine","year":2023,"doi":"10.1056/NEJMoa2214122"}]},"route":"/people/jenny-donovan/","neighbours":{"person":[{"id":"freddie-hamdy","kind":"person","name":"Freddie C. Hamdy","route":"/people/freddie-hamdy/"}],"cancer":[{"id":"prostate-intermediate-risk","kind":"cancer","name":"Localised prostate cancer, intermediate risk","route":"/cancers/prostate-intermediate-risk/"},{"id":"prostate-low-risk","kind":"cancer","name":"Localised prostate cancer, very low and low risk","route":"/cancers/prostate-low-risk/"},{"id":"prostate","kind":"cancer","name":"Prostate cancer","route":"/cancers/prostate/"}],"section":[{"id":"radiation","kind":"section","name":"Radiation Therapy","route":"/fronts/radiation/"},{"id":"surgery","kind":"section","name":"Surgery & Interventional","route":"/fronts/surgery/"}],"institution":[{"id":"bristol-haematology-oncology-centre","kind":"institution","name":"Bristol Haematology and Oncology Centre","route":"/institutions/bristol-haematology-oncology-centre/"}],"trial":[{"id":"protect","kind":"trial","name":"ProtecT","route":"/trials/protect/"}]}}