Real-Life Decision Making -- Solution
You do not ask the man to participate due to his circumstances.
This is the real-life decision made by Dr. Brian Rowe. He's a clinical
research physician.
"Obviously we didn't want to impact the study, but we also felt it was
inappropriate to enroll someone who was under a tremendous amount of stress,
who perhaps wasn't thinking clearly, and we felt that he needed to be somewhere
else, as opposed to in a study," says Rowe.
"And so we thanked him for his participation, but we didn't enroll him
in the study. Even though people can provide informed consent, they sometimes
shouldn't be enrolled in studies because the external factors in their lives
are too difficult.
"Informed consent is a critically important thing because it's a privilege
for us to have patients in our study," adds Rowe.
"So we need to ensure that they're protected, that it's appropriate for
them to be involved, [that] they've got the time and the interest to be involved,
and only then can we ethically enroll them. But otherwise, we don't enroll
patients in studies where we think they may not be able to complete or they
really shouldn't be spending their time in a study [because] they have other,
more important things to take attend to."