CASE STUDIES IN HEALTH INFORMATION MANAGEMENT 395 CASE 6-49 Research Studies and

Question

CASE STUDIES IN HEALTH INFORMATION MANAGEMENT 395 CASE 6-49 Research Studies and Ethics One of the physicians on staff is telling you about a study that he is doing on his patients. He hopes to have the study published and to receive a grant to expand his research. He offers to hire you part time to help him with the data collection during your off hours. You accept the part time position and begin helping him. : You start collecting data. When you access the file the next day, you realize that he has removed a number of patients from the study. You suspect that they were removed intentionally, but you cannot be sure. You put your suspicions aside and proceed with your work and add more patients to the database. A few days later more patients have been removed from the database. When you do some investigation, you discover that the patients who were removed were sicker and/or had a poor outcome. 1. Determine what you should do. 2. Identify the issues that are involved in this situation.

Explanation / Answer

1. This is a case of falsification i.e. the changing or omission of research results (data) to support claims. Hence it is a misconduct of research. Thus an effort should be made to ensure the integrity of the research by discussing it with the principal researcher and making the data reproducible. If the principal researcher i.e. physician does not listen it should be reported to the authorities.

2. The issue involved in this is; falsification, fabrication of research data i.e. misconduct of research; putting the integrity of data at stake.

     

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