Brief Description of the Intervention
Public health research and evaluation requires generation and validation of widely available research evidences so that improvement of the quality of research, program related evaluation and surveillance could be achieved (McKee, 2013). Ethics works as a boundary in these activities and restrict the research in a certain way so that the researchers and their research could be saved from serious deviations and misconduct. Therefore, while describing the definition of public health ethics, Vayena et al. (2015) mentioned that ethics is the concept that provides moral consideration, transparency, privacy, confidentiality and helps to prevent harmful actions. This assignment as well, deals with the ethical issues which are inherited in the public health related research and evaluation and further will reflect on the strategies used to mitigate the adverse effects and ensure the practice follows ethical practice properly.
This assignment evaluates the research project of Eddy et al. (2015) and focuses on the ethical considerations which affects the research project positively as well as negatively. () aimed to research about smoking and its adverse effects in pregnant women and to understand the role of midwifes in decreasing the number of smoking events in pregnant women specifically in younger and M?ori community (Cram, Pipi & Paipa, 2018). This article discussed about several interventions that could have been used for smoking cessation in pregnant women. However, the deep involvement of pregnant women with their midwife carers determined the researchers to use the ABC approach to implement the smoking cessation strategy by employing LMCs or Lead Maternity Carers who cared for more than 200 women during their pregnancy (Wehipeihana & McKegg, 2012). The ABC approach is applied in three steps in which the first step is asking about the smoking habit and its prevalence in life. Secondly, the LMCs provide a brief description of the adverse effects of smoking and a tailored description of the benefits of being smoke free. The third step is about offering an additional smoking cessation support to the women as an aid so that they could become smoke free. This intervention was applied in the homely environment and after that the midwives were asked to keep a 15 month record of the impact of smoking cessation program on the women. Further, the aim of the intervention also included the assessment of communication, group practice and the frequency at which the intervention was applied on each of the women involved in the study (Doutrich et al., 2012).
Analysis of Potential Ethical Issues
Ethics is the concept that requires protection of the dignity of the research subjects and publish the research result however, while working in research projects, the helathcare professionals had to cope with three primary aspects which are system, society and nursing science which creates a conflict with the values, of the community, subject involved and the community (Cram, Pipi & Paipa, 2018). Hence, it is important for the researchers to address the major ethical issues in public health research which are informed consent, beneficence, respecting anonymity and confidentiality as well as respect for privacy. The article of discussion by Wehipeihana and McKegg (2018) also included several ethical issues that affected the reliability of the research.
In the methodology section, the researchers mentioned that to understand the effect of ABC approach in the research context, it was important to assess the frequency at which interventions or smoking interventions were applied on the participants. Further, also mentioned that using this strategy, the degree of effectiveness of the intervention could also be calculated (Doutrich et al., 2012). However, it was mentioned in the study that the LMCs were not collecting the data regarding the frequency at which, they and the midwives were providing interventions to the pregnant women involved in the study (Buckley et al., 2015). This was an ethical issue as it has the ability to affect the research findings by altering the results and its interpretation. Further, the study also involved a very smaller amount of subjects and interpreted the data to a larger population of the country. Therefore, generalizing the data to the wider New Zealand population affects the ethical consideration of the study and breaches the data related ethical consideration (Vo, Schreiber & Martin, 2018). The third ethical concern which was identified in the assignment was breaching the autonomy of the subjects. the research article did not mentioned any instances where the subject or the pregnant women were asked about their choice of quitting smoking however, they were provided with adverse effects of smoking and beneficiary effect of smoking cessation, that influenced their choice. Therefore, it affected the ethical considerations of the research and imposed the ABC approach of smoking cessation without any informed consent (Cram, Pipi & Paipa, 2018).
It is important for any research to be ethically approved by any governing or authorized body so that the reliability and application of the research and its findings could be increased. If ethical approval is not achieved, the research becomes unethical (Vo, Schreiber & Martin, 2018). Therefore, by ethical review of the paper, the research receives ethical consideration and the participants are saved from any adverse condition which arises in the course of the research (Doutrich et al., 2012). This research paper was reviewed and authorized by the Ethics Committee of New Zealand in the year 2011 that has a set of guidelines and regulations as per which, the research was approved. As per the guidelines, the research should have included the ethical considerations such as autonomy of the subject, beneficence, non-maleficence and privacy so that the data and its integrity could be saved for years to increase its application (Buckley et al., 2015). Therefore, the ethical committee after finding all this guidelines and policies satisfied for the research approved or reviewed the paper. Further as the study was an observational study and included data which could be applied to the future research aspects. Besides this, it was it should also be mentioned that as the application of this particular study in context of pregnant women was relevant and required a detailed analysis and generation of interventions, this research article was reviewed by the ethical committee of New Zealand (Vo, Schreiber & Martin, 2018).
Brief Description of Ethical Review
One of ethical issues that can be identified is that no questions has been asked to the participants, whether they wanted to quit smoking at their own will. This could have been done by the conduction of an interview where the participants could have asked for their consent regarding smoking cessation. It was necessary to understand whether the respondents themselves wanted to quit smoking or not. Furthermore the sample size of the study do not represent all the Maori women of New Zealand and hence do not signify the perception of all the Maori pregnant women residing in New Zealand. A randomized control trial consisting of a large population was necessary to validate the authentication of the research. Another ethical issue that has been identified is that smoking cessation interventions were provided with varying frequency as the midwives did not provide ABC interventions for every women, and due to this some women did not receive any interventions while some received more often than the others In order to mitigate this biasness, a health promotion program would have been conducted inviting the Pregnant mothers, to provide information at a bulk.
The Aboriginal researches can be defined as the researches that touches the life of the Canadian aboriginal people or the Maori people. As clinical trials are researches involve conduction of interviews or surveys or randomized controlled trials involving the life of these people, ethical considerations should be made while undertaking the clinical research (Castellano, 2014). Ethics are the rules of conduct that expresses and reinforces important cultural and the social values (National Ethics Advisory Committee., 2012). Determination of the ethical issue in this paper would help me in the future conduction of the clinical trials and studies. There had been incidents where repeatedly the Maori ethics has been breached. It may be related to informed consent or regarding disclosure of information about the conduction of the study. Such a practice would help me to consider the facts that would determine the basic rights of the Maori people and to consider the factors while conducting future research. Several researches has been carried out in past related to aboriginal health where ethics has been breached. I will be mindful about the ethical considerations that has to be made while conducting research with the Maori people, especially the women (Putt, 2013). Some of the factors that has been identified are the gender matching while obtaining the feedback as Maori women can feel uncomfortable while interacting with an opposite gender. Any form of health checkups should be performed by a female midwife. All the information and the purpose of the trial should be disclosed to the women and they should be permitted to take their decisions of participating in this study. Being mindful about the ethical guidelines in any future researches regarding the Maori, would help in the preservation of the basic rights of the women and the Maori.
Conclusion
In conclusion it can be said that consideration of the ethical guidelines is extremely important while conducting researches regarding Maori women. Although ethical approval has been taken but there are few ethical parameters that has to be considered, like the study did not represent the entire population of pregnant women in New Zealand. Most of the interventions did not reach all the women who visited the study which resulted to a bias. However a bigger RCT or conduction of interviews to take the feedback from the pregnant women regarding their perception of smoke free. However it should be affirmed that it is the ethics that affects that their culture, wellbeing and the identity.
References
Buckley, J., Archibald, T., Hargraves, M., & Trochim, W. M. (2015). Defining and teaching evaluative thinking: Insights from research on critical thinking. American Journal of Evaluation, 36(3), 375-388. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1098214015581706
Castellano, M. B. (2014). Ethics of Aboriginal Research1. Global bioethics and human rights: Contemporary issues, 273. https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=6tFiAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA273&dq=ethics+of+aboriginal+research&ots=Ja05zDfwCR&sig=Hruu4Q6DQQ39fH61BPd95XCO6n8#v=onepage&q=ethics%20of%20aboriginal%20research&f=false
Cram, F., Pipi, K., & Paipa, K. (2018). Kaupapa M?ori Evaluation in Aotearoa New Zealand. New Directions for Evaluation, 2018(159), 63-77. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ev.20331
Doutrich, D., Arcus, K., Dekker, L., Spuck, J., & Pollock-Robinson, C. (2012). Cultural safety in New Zealand and the United States: Looking at a way forward together. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 23(2), 143-150. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1043659611433873
Eddy, A., Prileszky, G., Nicoll, K., Barker, R., & Anisy, J. (2015). ABC by LMC midwives: an innovative intervention to support women to become smoke-free in pregnancy. NZCOM J, 51, 37-43. DOI:
McKee, R. (2013). Ethical issues in using social media for health and health care research. Health Policy, 110(2-3), 298-301. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2013.02.006
National Ethics Advisory Committee. (2012). Ethical guidelines for intervention studies: Revised edition. Wellington (New Zealand): Ministry of Health. https://neac.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/ethical-guidelines-for-intervention-studies-2012v2_0.pdf
Putt, J. (2013). Conducting research with Indigenous people and communities. Sydney: Indigenous Justice Clearinghouse. https://www.indigenousjustice.gov.au/
Vayena, E., Salathé, M., Madoff, L. C., & Brownstein, J. S. (2015). Ethical challenges of big data in public health. PLoS computational biology, 11(2), e1003904. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003904
Vo, A. T., Schreiber, J. S., & Martin, A. (2018). Toward a Conceptual Understanding of Evaluative Thinking. New Directions for Evaluation, 2018(158), 29-47. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ev.20324
Wehipeihana, N., & McKegg, K. (2018). Values and culture in evaluative thinking: Insights from Aotearoa New Zealand. New Directions for Evaluation, 2018(158), 93-107.DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ev.20320
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
