LESSON REVIEW (5 minutes)

NUR 027 (Nursing Research 1-Lecture) BS

INSTRUCTOR’S GUIDE NURSING/SECOND YEAR
Session # 26

Materials:
LESSON TITLE: ETHICS IN RESEARCH
Book, pen and notebook

LEARNING OUTCOMES: Textbook:

Upon completion of this lesson, the nursing student will be Barrientos-Tan, C. (2011). A Research Guide in Nursing
able to:
1. Explain the ethical aspect of research.
2. Illustrate the ethical standards in research.
Education: Building an Evidence-Based Practice. Pasay
City: Philippines, Visprint Inc.
References:
Polit, Denise F. & Beck, Cheryl T. (2012). Nursing
research: Generating and assessing evidence for nursing
research (9th ed.), Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer Health/
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

The instructor will open a box of rolled papers with your assigned numbers. The students whose numbers were
picked by the instructor will answer one of the following questions:
1. Aside from questionnaire, what are the other types of research instruments?
2. What are the types and methods of interview?

MAIN LESSON (30 minutes)

Ethical Aspects of Nursing Research

The word “ethics” is Greek for “ethikos.” It refers to ‘the rule of conduct recognized in certain associations or
departments of human life’ (Simpson, 2004).

Nursing Research uses human beings as subjects, hence, the researcher must exercise caution to protect the rights of
the subjects against undue impositions. The complex nature of nursing research may place the researcher and the
participants of the study in a potentially compromising situation.

Basis for Ethical Standards

Because of these unethical activities in the name of science, several codes were developed examples of which are the
Nuremberg Code, Declaration of Helsinki, Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS),
Belmont Report and Professional Code of Ethics for Nurses.

A. Nuremberg Code
This code was developed in 1949 borne out of the Nuremberg trials. This was done primarily due to sadistic
treatment of subjects by Nazi experimenters. Hence, rules were formulated to guide investigators in their conduct
of research. The code stipulated the following as essential requirements of ethical research which are voluntary
consent, withdrawal of subjects from study, protection of subjects from physical and mental suffering, injury,
disability and death, and balance of benefits and risks.

Ten Directives for Human Experimentation

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1. Voluntary consent : absolutely essential
 2. Generalizable knowledge: NO other way, NOT random and UNNECESSARY in nature
3. Animal experimentation should PRECEDE human experimentation
4. UNNECESSARY physical and mental SUFFERING and INJURY should be avoided
5. No experiment should be conducted if there is reason to believe that DEATH OR DISABLING injury will
occur 6. Degree Of Risk To Subjects should never exceed the HUMANITARIAN IMPORTANCE of the
problem 7. Risks to the subjects should be minimized through PROPER PREPARATION
8. Experiments should only be conducted by scientifically qualified investigators
9. Subjects should always be at liberty to withdraw from experiments
10. Investigators must be ready to end the experiment at any stage if there is cause to believe that continuing the
experiment is likely to result in injury, disability or death to the subject

B. Declaration of Helsinki
This declaration was adopted by the World Medical Association in 1964. It was last updated in 2000. The main
contribution of this document was the introduction of the distinction between therapeutic and non-therapeutic
research. In therapeutic research the patient could benefit from experimental treatment that might have beneficial
results. In a non-therapeutic research, the main goal in the generation of new knowledge which might produce
beneficial results to future patients but less likely to the actual research subjects.

C. CIOMS
The CIOMs Guidelines, formally known as International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving
Human Subjects, is a set of ethical principles regarding human experimentation. It was created in 1993 by the
Council for International Organizations of Medical Science (CIOMS) and was updated in 2002. The 21 guidelines,
fifteen of which were in the original report, addressed issues including informed consent, standards for external
review, recruitment of participants and so on. The guidelines are general instructions and principles of ethical
biomedical research.

D. Belmont Report
On July12, 1974, the National Research Act was signed into law thereby creating the National Commission for the
Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioural Research. The commission was to identify the basic
ethical principles that should underlie the conduct of biomedical and behavioural research involving human
subjects and to develop guidelines to assure that such research of this sort is conducted in accordance with those
principles. The report was published by the commission in 1979 titled The Belmont Report. This report had the
following considerations:

∙ The boundaries between biomedical and behavioural research and the accepted routine practice of medicine;
∙ The role of assessment of risk-benefit criteria in the determination of the appropriateness of research
involving human subjects;
∙ Appropriate guidelines for the selection of human subjects for participation in such
research ∙ The nature and definition of informed consent in various research settings.

E. Code of Ethics for Nurses

The code revised in 2000 is a guide for action based on social values and needs. The code served as the standard
for nurses’ performance worldwide since it was first adopted in 1953. The new version, revised for the first time in
27 years, responds to the realities of nursing and health care in a changing society.

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 Education (Department of Nursing) 2 of 4
CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING (15 minutes)
Graded Recitation. Students will be instructed to read the situation given below and to answer the following questions
in not more than 5 sentences.

Situation
You are an investigator proposing to use data from a colleague’s database to conduct secondary analyses. You want
to examine the behaviour and attitudes of male students. Your colleague will provide coded data for your proposed
studies, and you and he enter into an agreement by which he will keep the key to the code and will have no other
involvement in the research. Therefore, your colleague is not an investigator in your research.

Questions:

1. Does this study involve human subjects? Why? Why not?

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2. Is the study ethical? Why? Why not?

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RATIONALIZATION ACTIVITY
The instructor will now ask the students to recite and let them rationalize the answers as they will be encouraged to
discuss among their classmates.

ANSWERS:

1. Does this study involve human subjects? Why? Why not?

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2. Is the study ethical? Why? Why not?

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LESSON WRAP-UP (10 minutes)

You will now mark (encircle) the session you have finished today in the tracker below. This is simply a visual to help
you track how much work you have accomplished and how much work there is left to do.

You are done with the session! Let’s track your progress.

AL Strategy: Numbered Heads Together

As part of the review of the lesson given, you will be grouped into 6. Each of you will be assigned of a number so that
each team has numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6. The following question will be asked by the instructor:

What makes a research in nursing ethical?

You will discuss your answer in your respective group. After your group discussion, the instructor calls out numbers.
The students standing are the speaker for their team.
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