Research ethics and nursing science: an empirical example

In recent years scientists and scholars have been paying increasing attention to the problem of research ethics. Ethics are always basically to do with values, with what is right and what is wrong. In the present study ethics are considered as a self-critical approach to the solutions made in the course of the research process. The aim is to identify those points in the research process where ethical problems assume central importance. One such point is the treatment of human subjects: in the field of nursing science there are certain special requirements that must be taken into consideration because here we often use the clients of the health care system as our main source of information. Following the theoretical discussion, we present an empirical example of the treatment of ethical problems in theses produced by Finnish nursing science graduates.