Professionalism in practice: Exploring the ethical perplexity of involving students in Medical Education Research

With the worldwide increase in the number of medical education researches, few ethical quagmires have emerged regarding the recruitment and inclusion of students in research projects. The ethicists often tend to raise questions regarding the possibilities of students getting coerced to participate, such as whether they receive extra course credits in exchange for their participation, or whether their privacy is getting violated in the course of data collection. It is the need of the hour to address the perplexity behind these ethical dilemmas. Some answers to the ethical questions might call for implication of change in the organization of research, thereby affecting the output. This commentary tries to address these issues in a genuine manner and affords a way forward in the context of ethics related to educational research. By treading the delicate path between framing the research question which never encompass any ethical breaches and compromising the rigour of the study design to suffice certain baseless hindrances, we could appreciate the importance of practical ethics in educational researches.