Answer for NRS 465 Define the role of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) when conducting research Topic 3 DQ 2

The institutional review board (IRB) plays a critical role in research that involves human subjects or participants. The Institutional Review Board is an administrative entity created to protect the rights and welfare of human research subjects recruited to participate in research activities carried out based on the rules of the institution with which it is associated (Serpico et al., 2022). The IRB process is aimed at ensuring that study participants are safe and the research leads to high-quality evidence for application in clinical settings and health populations. The primary role of IRB is to review, before its initiation, all research involving human participants. The IRB protects the welfare, rights, and privacy of human subjects. For instance, it ensures that research subjects have informed consent (Lynch et al., 2020). The IRB has the authority to approve, exempt, disapprove, monitor and evaluate, and demand changes in all research activities that fall within its jurisdictions based on set regulations at state and federal levels and institutional policy. The IRB reviews research proposals to ensure ethical considerations are upheld, ascertain possible benefits outweigh the potential risks to participants, and ascertain informed consent procedures are sufficient.

An example of a peer-reviewed research article involving human participants and discussing a nursing issue is by O’Brien (2020) titled, “Decreasing Falls Amongst Elderly.” In the study, the researcher involved 26 nurses’ aides who were trained for over 10 weeks to perform an evidence-based intervention: purposeful hourly rounding based on 4 Ps. The researcher prioritized ethical considerations are required by IRB. These included getting informed consent from the nurses, confidentiality, minimizing harm, and ensuring that they benefited from the EBP intervention. For instance, the researcher did not reveal the identity of the participants while the essence of the training was to equip nurses with four interventions to reduce and prevent patient falls. These included assessing pain, personal needs, appropriate positioning, and placement.

References

Lynch, H. F., & Rosenfeld, S. (2020). Institutional review board quality, private equity, and

promoting ethical human subjects research. Annals of Internal Medicine, 173(7), 558-562. DOI: 10.7326/M20-1674.

O’Brien, J. (2020). Decreasing Falls Amongst Elderly. International Journal of

Nursing and Health Care Research, 3:1201. DOI: 10.29011/2688-9501.101201