Learning How to Hang My Hat

I am not going to lie. This year has been a whirlwind of chaos! Trying to complete an expedited program is difficult enough, throw a pandemic in the mix and some would declare it game over. Despite all its challenges, I believe that our cohort has accomplished amazing things and I am so lucky to have met and gotten to work with these people. Additionally, in the first semester of this program, I have learned a lot about myself and what is going on around me as well as how my actions and words impact others. One subject touched upon this semester that has helped round me out as a person is the ethical principles of biomedicine. Integrating ethics into TBLs and case studies is important and very useful for future healthcare providers as it  allows us to hone our “ethical vocabulary”, per say, and begin to practice these important modes of thinking.

This semester, it hit me just how important it was to be aware of these ethical principles when we started working on our physiology project. This was my first human subject study and it comes with a lot more preparation (as many of you recall the laborious IRB approval process). Albeit hard work, it is very rewarding and exciting. Our study focused on the physiological response to taking a stress-inducing COVID-19 survey where our researchers wore full PPE (gowns, gloves, face shields) to further invoke a physiological response. One of the participants was so shaken up that they were trembling as they flipped the pages of the survey. Their blood pressure was much higher than her initial baseline and their heart rate fluctuated throughout the experiment. They were debriefed and were monitored until  they returned to baseline, however I could not help but feel guilty that we affected them in that way. Of course the data is good for us scientists, as it correlated to our hypothesis and in the end the participant was fine, but is there a line that should not be crossed?

After reading an article by a scientist from the University of Berne, I found that this is a phenomenon that is constantly present in the field of physiological research. Since physiologists are essentially bound to testing their experiments on living matter, it is a constant struggle to address the ethical dilemmas present that come with research. He continues to say that the respect for human life must be the guiding ethical principle when it comes to physiological research and that it is a constant factor that we need to keep in mind when making advances in the field (Weibel, 2002).  Although not specifically mentioned, I could not help but think about beneficence and nonmaleficence discussed in class. I believe that if research is to be done, it needs to be backed by how it can benefit society as a whole and cause the least amount of damage to its participants. I was also reminded of justice, and how these participants are giving up their time and their bodies in order to learn new things and it is our duty to make sure that they are treated fairly throughout the whole process. 

I enjoyed reading the article written by Weibel and it solidified the importance of always keeping in mind the ethical principles we have learned so far in this program. We should use them to help form every decision we make so that we never fall victim to ignorance or malpractice. As the Jesuits say Cura Personalis, care of the whole person, and I am glad that I was able to take care of that participant that might have been slightly traumatized by our experiment and I am glad that I did not let science get in the way of taking care of our participant. By learning how to hang my hat on certain ethical principles I feel more confident as a researcher and as an aspiring  future healthcare professional. I hope to continue to be vigilant in exercising these ethical principles in the future as well as learning more since it stems so much further than physiology!

References:

Weibel, E. R. (2002). News From Iups. Physiology, 12(6), 294-295.doi:10.1152/physiologyonline.1997.12.6.294