Carrying out a nursing research presupposes managing a huge set of responsibilities, the safety of the research subjects being the key one. As a result, a nursing specialist in charge of a research must make sure that the study subject should not face any major threats in the process.
Since the patient’s willingness to partake in the research and, therefore, provide essential information about themselves, as well as the security of the patient’s personal data, is crucial to their wellbeing, the ethical principles known as informed consent and confidentiality can be viewed as tantamount to the research involving human subjects (Polit & Beck, 2012).
Traditionally defined as “a process of communication between a client and a member of the healthcare team” (Guide to good nursing practice informed consent, 2014), which presupposes that the patient is provided with the details concerning a specific nursing procedure and agrees to undergo it, informed consent is obviously the key to starting a nursing research that complies with the basic ethical principles (Johnstone, 2011).
The issue of confidentiality is also a major part of nursing research ethics, according to the existing statement (Butts, 2013). As the related sources state, confidentiality in nursing research is traditionally defined as the data that was disclosed to the nurse by the patient or a member of the patient’s family, and that the nurse must keep private “unless the information falls under a limit of confidentiality” (Butts, 2013, p. 90).
As far as the facilitation of the specified principles for the participant and the creation of the environment, in which the principles in question will work, a researcher must be aware of the possible obstacles. While confidentiality can be provided in nearly every possible research scenario, retrieving the informed consent of the participant is not always a possibility. For example, if a study is conducted in the school setting, it will be reasonable to suggest that some of the research participants will be under age. In the specified scenario, the assistance of parents or tutors will be required.
Maintaining the confidentiality of the patient, in its turn, is a much easier task, as it can be controlled by the researcher fully. Integrating the latest technological advances into the study design, a researcher is capable of protecting the privacy of the participant fully. Confidentiality can be achieved by keeping the research subject’s data in a password protected database and the principle of research information non-disclosure among the study participants.
It would be wrong to claim that the ethical principle of confidentiality does not have any exceptions. The disclosure of the patient’s or their family’s personal data, for example, is possible if required by legislation or when other people are under a threat (CRNBS, 2012). As far as the informed consent is concerned, though, no exceptions are possible, according to the existing nursing ethics standards (Keech, 2010).
As the security of the research subject must be the basic ethical concern of any researcher, the ethical principles known as confidentiality of the patient’s personal data and the acquisition of the patient’s informed consent can be interpreted as tantamount to the studies involving human subjects. Making sure that the patient is aware of the consequences and facilitating the security of the participant’s personal data is crucial to the outcomes of the research and, therefore, must be viewed as the basic ethical concerns of any researcher.
Reference List
Butts, J. (2013). Chapter 3. Ethics in professional nursing practice. In J. Butts & K. L. Rich, Nursing ethics (pp. 81–117). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
CRNBS. (2012). Privacy and confidentiality. Practice standard for registered nurses and nurse practitioners. Web.
Guide to good nursing practice informed consent. (2014). Web.
Johnstone, M.-J. (2011). Nursing ethics and informed consent. Australian Nursing Journal, 19(5), p. 29.
Keech, L. (2010). Be socially savvy: giving vent to grievances on social networking sites can breach patient confidentiality and compromise the nursing profession. Nursing Management (Harrow), 17(4), p. 11.
Polit, D. & Beck, C. (2012). Nursing research: Generating and assessing evidence for nursing practice (9th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, Williams, Wilkins.