Ethical aspects in nursing research.

1. ETHICAL ASPECTS IN NURSING
RESEARCH
ETHICALASPECTS IN NURSING RESEARCH
PRATIMA THAKUR
Assistant Professor

2. Meaning of ethics
The English word "ethics" is derived from the Ancient
Greek word ethikos meaning "relating to one's character”.

3. Ethics in Nursing Research
Ethics in nursing research can be defined as the act of moral principles
that the researcher has to follow while conducting nursing research to
ensure the rights and welfare of individuals, groups, or community
under study.

4. Objectives of Research Ethics
There are three objectives in research ethics:
To protect human participants.
To ensure that research is conducted in a way that serves interests of
individuals, groups and/or society as a whole.
To examine specific research activities and projects for their ethical
soundness, looking at issues such as the management of risk, protection of
confidentiality and the process of informed consent.

5. Importance of Research Ethics
Promote the aims of research, such as expanding knowledge.
Support the values required for collaborative work·
Accountable for their actions.
 They ensure that the public can trust research. For people to support
and fund research, they have to be confident in it.
Support important social and moral values, such as the principles of
doing no harm to others.

6. Code of Ethics for Nurses
Indian Nursing Council has published the Code of Ethics for Nurses in India
in the year 2006. The Code of Ethics for Nurses in India (2006) are as
follows:
The nurse respects the uniqueness of an individual in provision of care.
The nurse respects the rights of individuals as partners in care and helps in
making informed choices.

7. The nurse respects individual’s rights to privacy, maintains
confidentiality and shares information judiciously.
The nurse maintains competence in order to render quality nursing
care.
The nurse is obliged to work harmoniously with members of health
team.
The nurse commits to reciprocate the trust invested in nursing
profession by the society.

8. Many or even most ethical codes cover the following areas:
• Honesty and Integrity
• Objectivity
• Carefulness
• Openness
• Respect for Intellectual Property
• Confidentiality
• Responsible Publication
• Legality

9. Problems and Challenges of Research Nursing
Inadequate knowledge
Lack of qualified guide
Difficulty in controlling external variables
Lack of time
Lack of standardized tools
Reliability of disciplined research
Ethical problems
Financial constraints
Lack of support from administrative set up

11. Principles of Research Ethics
There are a number of ethical principles that should be taken into
account when performing undergraduate and master's level dissertation
research.
At the core, these ethical principles stress the need to:
(a) do good (known as beneficence)
(b) do no harm (known as non-malfeasance)

12. In practice, these ethical principles mean that as a researcher, you
need to:
(a) obtain informed consent from potential research participants
(b) minimise the risk of harm to participants
(c) protect their anonymity and confidentiality
d) avoid using deceptive practices
(e) give participants the right to withdraw from your research

13. Five Ethical Principles
Principle One: Minimizing the risk of harm
Principle Two: Obtaining Informed consent
Principle Three: Protecting anonymity and confidentiality
Principle Four: Avoiding deceptive practice
Principle Five: Providing the right to withdraw

14. Principle One
Minimizing the risk of harm
There are a number of types of harm that participants can be subjected
to. These include:
• Physical harm to participants.
• Psychological distress and discomfort.
• Social disadvantage.
• Harm to participants financial status.
• An invasion of participants privacy and anonymity

15. In order to minimising the risk of harm you should think about:
• Obtaining informed consent from participants.
• Protecting the anonymity and confidentiality of participants.
• Avoiding deceptive practices when designing your research.
• Providing participants with the right to withdraw from your research
at any time.

16. Principle Two
Obtaining Informed consent
Informed consent is more than a form or a signature; it is a process of
information exchange that includes recruitment material, verbal dialogues,
presentation of written materials, questions and answers, and an agreement
that is documented by a signature.
Simply put, informed consent means that participants should understand
that
(a) they are taking part in research.
(b) what the research requires of them?

17. You should also be aware that there are instances informed consent is
not necessarily needed or needs to be relaxed. These include
certain educational, organisational and naturalistic research settings. We
discuss these in more detail under the section: Avoiding deceptive
practices.

18. Principle Three
Protecting anonymity and confidentiality
Protecting the anonymity and confidentiality of research participants is
another practical component of research ethics.
The records of the human participants of the research or experiment are
to the highest degree is possible to kept confidential. An alternative is to
remove identifiers (e.g., vernacular terms, names, geographical cues,
etc.) or provide proxies when writing up.

19. Principle Four
Avoiding deceptive practice
At first sight, deceptive practices fly in the face of informed consent.
After all, how can participants know:
(a) that they are taking part in research
(b) what the research requires of them if they are being deceived?
Deception is sometimes a necessary component of covert research,
which can be justified in some cases.

20. Covert research reflects research where
(a) the identity of the observer
(b) the purpose of the research is not known to participants
Cases where you may choose to engage in covert research may include
instances where:
• It is not feasible to let everyone in a particular research setting know what
you are doing
• Overt observation or knowledge of the purpose of the research
may alter the particular phenomenon that is being studied

21. Imagine some of the following scenarios where covert research may be
considered justifiable:
Scenario A:
You are conducting a piece of research looking at prejudice. Whilst participants are
given a questionnaire to complete that measures their prejudice, it is not obvious
from the questions that this is the case. Furthermore, participants are not told that the
research is about prejudice because it is felt that this could alter their responses.
After all, few people would be happy if other people thought they were prejudice.
As a result, if participants knew that this is the purpose of the study, they may well
provide responses that they think will make them appear less prejudice.

22. Scenario B:
You are interested in understanding the organisational culture in a
single firm. You feel that observation would be an appropriate research
method in such a naturalistic setting. However, you feel that if
employees knew that you were monitoring them, they may behave in a
different way. Therefore, you may have received permission to go
undercover or provide a story to explain why you are there, which is
not the truth.

23. Principle Five
Providing the right to withdraw
With the exception of those instances of covert observation where is not
feasible to let everyone that is being observed know what you are doing,
research participants should always have the right to withdraw from the
research process. Furthermore, participants should have the right to withdraw
at any stage in the research process. When a participant chooses to withdraw
from the research process, they should not be pressured or coerced in any
way to try and stop them from withdrawing.

24. If your supervisor and/or Ethics Committee expect you to complete
an Ethics Consent Form, it is likely that you will have to let
participants know that they have the right to withdraw at any time.

25. Ethical responsibilities of a Nurse Researcher
• Respect of individual’s autonomy
• Protection of the vulnerable group
• Optimum balance between risk-benefit ratio
• Privacy , confidentiality and anonymity must be promised
• Maintain competence in identified research area
• Maintain proficiency in research methods