Ethics: issues of concern

Awareness of the aforementioned issues (confidentiality and privacy, deception and debriefing, and publication of study results and data analysis) is a major step in preventing the violation of a patient's dignity as a human being during a research study. Also, with patients themselves in unison with patient advocates demanding "humane" care and voicing the patient's "right to know" about alternative procedures, we must not assume our study participants to be naive and blindly trusting of nursing. On the other hand the public perception of nursing as a profession of "care givers" and not "harm doers" is one that we should perpetuate in good faith.