Ethical Considerations in Qualitative Research with Hospice Patients

As scientific and medical advances propel the world toward the 21st century, ethical concerns have become an integral part of health care. The protection of human rights is mandated in health care research. The increasing use of qualitative research methods, however, high-lights ethical issues and concerns related to the research process, and these take on new meaning in the context of qualitative research. This article addresses three ethical issues in qualitative research with hospice patients. Examples taken from a naturalistic nursing study of the hospice patient's perspective of empathy describe one researcher's experience with those ethical issues.