title: Ethical Issues in Patient Safety Research: A Systematic Review of the Literature.
abstract: As many as 1 in 10 patients is harmed while receiving hospital care in wealthy countries. The risk of health care-associated infection in some developing countries is as much as 20 times higher. In response, in many global regions, increased attention has turned to the implementation of a broad program of safety research, encompassing a variety of methods. Although important international ethical guidelines for research exist, literature has been emerging in the last 20 years that begins to apply such guidelines to patient safety research specifically. This paper provides a review of the literature related to ethics, oversight, and patient safety research; identifies issues highlighted in articles as being of ethical relevance; describes areas of consensus regarding how to respond to these ethical issues; and highlights areas where additional ethical analysis and discussion are needed to provide guidance to those in the field.
authors.affiliation: From the *Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Berman Institute of Bioethics, Baltimore, Maryland; †World Health Organization Patient Safety Programme, Geneva, Switzerland; and ‡Global Health Ethics Unit, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Danielle M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Whicher
authors.forename: Nancy E
authors.initials: NE
authors.lastname: Kass
authors.forename: Carmen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Audera-Lopez
authors.forename: Mobasher
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Butt
authors.forename: Iciar Larizgoitia
authors.initials: IL
authors.lastname: Jauregui
authors.forename: Kendra
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Knoche
authors.forename: Abha
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Saxena
mesh_terms: D004992:Ethics, Medical; D006302:Health Services Research / Q000941:ethics*; D006801:Humans; D061214:Patient Safety; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care / Q000941:ethics; D017751:Safety Management