Ethics Guidance for Occupational Health Practice 9th Edition - Book - Page 96
Respect for potential and enrolled subjects: Respect for participants by:
o Permitting withdrawal from the research.
o Protecting privacy through confidentiality.
o Informing participants of newly discovered risks or benefits.
o Providing participants with the opportunity to receive the results of the
research.
o Maintaining welfare of participants.
5.17. Most occupational health research projects are conducted outside of a
therapeutic setting and involve approaches to individual members of a
workforce or healthy volunteers. Although some interventional studies are
conducted by occupational health professionals, most research involves
observational methods (e.g. cohort or case-control designs) examining workers’
performance of their normal day to day work activities. Alternatively, studies
may be population based involving the analysis of existing health or database
records. The ethics issues may therefore differ from other clinical research and
reference to guidance specific to occupational health research practice, such as
that produced by Rothstein 76 , may be helpful. Research for professional
accreditation or requiring independent review by a research ethics committee
may involve formal affiliation with an academic unit or the NHS.
5.18. Most occupational health research would fall into the ‘low risk’ category of
clinical research. The ethics issues tend to centre on recruitment, consent,
confidentiality, data protection and communication.
Information governance in research
Consent
5.19. Those recruited to an occupational health research study must give free and
informed consent as with other occupational health activities (see Chapter 3,
Information). Consent is an ongoing process that carries on as the research is
undertaken. Even when it is not practicable to obtain consent, such as from exworkers for participation in a retrospective cohort study of mortality and cancer
incidence, the researcher should consider an appropriate approach to ensure
the legal and ethical principles are not breached.
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