BAnEthical Perspective ± Nursing Research
Richard Ashcroft
Research is an essential element of innovation and quality improvement in health
care. As such, it aims at something of great collective value. It can also be enor-
mously personally rewarding to the researcher him or herself. For the subjects 'or participants 'in research, the research process can be beneficial for their health or
their well-being, both through the intervention they receive as part of the research
process, and through the fact of participating in the research process itself.
Research can, however, be pursued selfishly; it can cause harm or distress to
subjects; it can be irrelevant, unoriginal, incompetently or fraudulently performed;
and it can be exploitative.
There is therefore no question but that research is an ethically significant
activity, and that any research project must be pursued in an ethically reflective
way. Merely to say this is to skate over the complexities of doing so: the diversity of
research methods, settings in which research can be pursued, purposes to which
the results of research are put, people who do research and relationships between
them. This chapter will present the elements of the ethics of research, illustrating
these with examples. It will concentrate on two kinds of nurse 'and midwife and
health visitor) research activity: nursing research 'research into the health care
work and types of care and treatment that nurses do) and the work of research
nurses 'the role of the research nurse in clinical trials and other kinds of bio-
medical research). Nurses will also care for patients in clinical trials and other
studies in which the nurse has no direct involvement, but for most purposes the
ethical principles will be similar, since in all circumstances the nurse's primary
responsibility is for the patient. What varies between the roles of nurses with care
of patients in research, research nurses, and nursing researchers is the degree of
responsibility for the research and control over it, and the kinds of dilemma that
may arise.
12.8 The sources of nursing ethics
Ethical principles for professionals have a number of sources. These include:
. the law;
. professional codes of conduct;