A Review of Ethical Principles and Challenges in Nursing Research: A Narrative Review
akhlāq-i pizishkī i.e., Medical Ethics,
Vol. 19 (1404),
25 Mehr 2025
,
Page 1-16
https://doi.org/10.22037/mej.v19i-.50741
Abstract
Background and Aim: Ethics plays a vital role in ensuring human health, well-being and dignity, particularly within the nursing profession. One relatively underexplored domain is research ethics, which is fundamental to maintaining scientific integrity and safeguarding research participants. Therefore, the present narrative review was conducted to identify, describe and analyze the ethical principles and challenges associated with nursing research.
Methods: This study was conducted as a narrative review. A comprehensive literature search was performed across PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Magiran, SID and Google Scholar. Keywords were selected based on the MeSH system. They included the English terms "Ethics", "Moral", "Principle-Based Ethics" and "Nursing Research", along with their Persian equivalents. The search covered publications from 2005 to 2025. After removing duplicate records and screening titles, abstracts and full texts, 15 articles were ultimately selected for final analysis based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Ethical Considerations: Throughout all stages of preparing this manuscript, principles of academic integrity, honesty and proper attribution were strictly observed.
Results: Content analysis of the 15 selected articles revealed that ethical principles, including autonomy and informed consent, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, honesty and confidentiality, constitute the core foundations of nursing research, underscoring the necessity of ethics education for nurses. Nevertheless, several challenges remain, including conducting research with vulnerable populations, role conflict between nurse and researcher and research misconduct, all of which pose significant threats to scientific and ethical integrity. In addition, emerging ethical concerns-such as the use of artificial intelligence in research-have received comparatively limited attention.
Conclusion: Awareness and application of ethical principles and recognition of ethical challenges in nursing research not only enhance the scientific quality of research outcomes but also strengthen public trust in nursing research, ultimately contributing to improved quality of care and health services. The findings of this review may serve as a foundation for developing research ethics education programs in nursing schools, formulating national ethical guidelines and codes and providing practical guidance for early-career nursing researchers
- ; Ethics
- Nursing
- Research
- Nursing Research
- Ethical principles
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References
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