Consider the following scenarios:
Scenario 1: A physician on staff tells you about a study that they are doing on their patients. They hope to have the study published and to receive a grant to expand their research. They offer to hire you to help them with the data collection during your off hours. You accept and begin helping them by collecting data. When you access the file the next day, you notice they have removed several patients from the study. You suspect that the patients were removed intentionally, but you cannot be certain. You put your suspicions aside and proceed with your work by adding more patients to the database. A few days later, you see that more patients have been removed from the database. When you investigate, you discover that the patients who were removed had worse outcomes relative to the study group. This is a problem and may prevent grant money from being rewarded for this project.
Scenario 2: You are traveling with your work laptop to a conference and leave it for five minutes at the airport terminal as you go to the bathroom. You asked your colleague to keep an eye on it, but when you return, your colleague has boarded the plane and taken your belongings. As you look through, you realize your laptop is missing. When you confront your colleague, she says it was just there a moment ago and she is certain she brought it on board with her. Your laptop contains secure information regarding your organization and has remote access to your clinical information system. The policy at your organization for a data breach is to call tech support immediately and report the breach. You think it may just be misplaced and begin looking.
Choose one of the scenarios above and answer the following:
- What challenges are present in the scenario, and what are some steps that can be taken to address them?
- What is the relationship between ethics and policy? Do they always match up with one another?
- What happens when individual ethics do not align with organizational policy?
Support your answer with relevant resources.
