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A perception gap often exists today between what health care providers say, prescribe and advise, and what patients actually understand and carry out in their self-care. Many factors can influence this gap, including a lack of language comprehension.
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One of the drawbacks for research conducted in this age of checklists and strong regulatory oversight is that IRBs and research institutions do what theyre required to do and sometimes neglect to address the bigger picture, an ethics expert says.
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As IRBs deal with the privacy provisions of HIPAA, they often must decide whether researchers are allowed to waive individual authorization for use of patients data.
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Add one more discipline to the list of those that have issues with IRB review: Oral historians, who maintain that they should not be required to seek review for their interviews with participants.
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The NIH has created a framework and benchmarks program for evaluating research ethics. Christine Grady, PhD, RN, head of the section on human subjects research in the department of clinical bioethics at NIH, provides these insights into the seven principles outlined in the framework:
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Guidelines and regulations related to research ethics often are conflicting and difficult to follow, so IRBs are left with a multitude of ways to interpret human subjects research issues that arise during the protocol review process.
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Spirituality is recognized as a factor that many patients say contributes to their health; but now experts even some who previously had doubts are embracing patients and their own spirituality as an essential part of treatment.
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The case of an 11-year-old Massachusetts girl, Haleigh Poutre, who suffered severe brain trauma last year as the result of abuse and is now in the custody of the state, has opened up discussion on withdrawing life support in pediatric patients who are diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state (PVS).
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If faced with the threat of SARS, avian flu or another epidemic, most Americans would consider quarantine a good idea but they wouldnt approve of strong enforcement. That is one American attitude toward quarantine described by Harvard public health researchers who studied U.S. attitudes about quarantine.
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The Society for Adolescent Medicine (SAM) has issued a position statement rejecting current administration policy promoting abstinence-only education for young people, urging U.S. educators to present abstinence as one important option in an overall sexual health prevention strategy.