T2 Discussion Questions
NUR 550
T2 DQ1
You attend a local health fair organized by several health care research companies.
You notice that a company is distributing a trial drug to other attendees at one of
the booths. When you approach one of the researchers, you are offered a waiver to
sign for participation in the trial.
What ethical or legal parameters should the researchers have considered prior to
distributing the trial drug at the health fair? If you were on the translational
research team, what steps would you have taken to maintain ethical and legal
guidelines?
Ethical and legal parameters when performing research is important to protect
participants, researchers, and the credibility of the research itself. The Belmont
Report attempts to create a summary of the basic ethical principles identified
during continuous meetings by the National Commission for the Protection of
Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (1979). The report clearly
defines the difference between practice and research. The Belmont Report defines
practice as the interventions specifically utilized to help the wellness of an
individual, while research is specifically designated to test hypotheses to draw a
conclusion and contribute to continued knowledge on something. The translational
research team, acting ethically, will undergo a review from an Institutional Review
Board (IRB) for the protection of human subjects used in their research (National
Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral
Research, 1979). The research team will hold three main principles: respect,
beneficence, and justice, in mind when working with human subjects to help
ensure they are treating these subject ethically and legally at all times during their
research (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of
Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1979). When recruiting human research
subjects, participants in the research team must respect that each person is
autonomous and are capable of consenting to be participants in the study. When
consenting these possible human subjects, the research team must legally obtain
consent that provides all information of the research to the possible subject