Discussion 5 Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Discussion 5 - Research Paper Example Pain medication usage should be carefully monitored to prevent overuse, abuse, and the possibility of addiction in both groups. The control group patients especially should be watched for the necessity of a referral to other pain management methods. Pain research studies also have the possibility of issues with informed consent due to a confounding of clinical treatment with research, which may be an issue with this study. Patients may join a pain study with the intent of accessing treatment or having their pain taken seriously. This reduces their ability to truly consent to the research (Wasan et al., 2009). A separate ethical issue that is not as relevant to the study at hand but is related to the ethics of pain research is the availability of pain management medications to all study participants regardless of the group they have been placed in for the research purposes (Drummond, 2009). Research considerations specific to the community involved also exist. The researcher must be a ware of the culture of the people they are studying and the effects this has on etiquette in that culture, to avoid offending the research subjects or contaminating their results. Cross-cultural researchers must also be careful to understand the heterogenity of a foreign culture, and to interpret their findings appropriately.