Clinical Research:Patient-Centered Goals:Set by Who?: The Patients!

:It was very interesting for me to read a Viewpoint article in the June 12 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). It has to do with medical research and the role of patients in that research. The article istitled "Patient's Responsibility to Participate in Decision Making and Research" by Tinetti and Basch. One always thinks that the role of the patient in medical research should be simply as the "guinea pig" or subject of the research and that the creation and development of the research project is the job of the research scientists and physicians. It is these professional folks who are known to understand the science and the missing information that needs to be discovered and they are the ones to be involved in deciding upon what and how and to what ends a medical research study should be designed. However, on thinking about this a bit further about how medical (also called clinical) research is to be initiated, one should ask the question as to whose primary benefit should the research be directed.  One could say that it is to increase the pool of medical knowledge from which physicians can access in order to treat all their patients. A more cynical answer would be that the benefit can be self-serving and really provide a significant benefit to the professional both in terms of satisfaction of personal inquisitiveness and, of course, the opportunity to advance one's professional career. The article, on the other hand, stresses the i...
Source: Bioethics Discussion Blog - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs