ONLY NEED TO BE 1 PARAGRAPH (5 TO 8 SENTENCES) 

Response to this:

 Ethical Review – The Stanford Prison ExperimentCOLLAPSE

The Stanford Prison Experiment is a classic case study used in many introductory psychology courses (Bartels, 2015). The controversial nature of the study and the dramatic results have lead many people to question the morality of the methods used, but was this experiment even ethical? Looking at the established set of guidelines published in the Nuremberg Code, it can be argued that this experiment is deficient in several areas of the code. The Nuremberg Code is considered by many to be the “most authoritative legal and human rights code on the subject of human experimentation (Emanuel, 2011, pp 136).”  The code outlines ten key elements that must be met to protect the safety and integrity of the human subjects involved in the research. The Stanford Prison Experiment did not satisfy the point in the code that states that, “the experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury (Emanuel, 2011, pp 139).” The investigator, Dr. Zimbardo, instructed the volunteers assigned to be guards to degrade the prisoners and to make them feel powerless. The guards also took away mattresses and stripped the prisoners naked to humiliate and establish their power. Some of the prisoners were so stressed and disturbed by the conditions that the experiment was ended a week early. There was no avoidance of unnecessary mental harm, and worse so, it was even encouraged by the investigator. Another main point of the code that appears to have been violated by this experiment was the point that, “during the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end (Office of Human Research Protections, (2018)).” While some of the prisoner subjects did choose to exit the study early, several were left in such a state of stress and confusion that they thought they were being held in jail. They internalized the role so much from the torment of the guards that a few days into the experiment, some of the prisoners staged a hungry strike and revolted against the guards (McLeoad, 2017). The prisoner subjects were left feeling that they had no liberty to leave and were even told so by some of the mock guards. This portion of the code was clearly avoided.

The timing of the Stanford Prison Experiment was centered right in the middle of when research ethics standards were being more accepted and publicized. The Declaration of Helsinki, which was originally adopted in 1964, held five original core principles regarding clinical research ethics. Among those principles was the notion for the “need for scientific and moral justification for the research (Emanuel, 2011, pp 142).” While the moral justification was questioned previously, the scientific need is what is controversial. What exactly was the useful medical or therapeutic knowledge gained from this experiment? The 1975 revision of the Declaration also brought to the forefront an emphasis on maximizing benefit while minimizing any risks to the subjects. It is clear from the methods used during this experiment that the risks were not minimized, and as such, another example of the unethical nature of this study.

Continuing with the concept of maximizing benefit while minimizing risk, the moral principle of Beneficence in the Belmont Report is applicable here. The key elements of beneficence in clinical research is to do no harm and maximize possible benefits and minimize possible harm (Office of Human Research Protections, (2018)). In the Stanford Prison Experiment case, the underlying theme of do no harm as it applies to the Belmont Report can be extracted from the Hippocratic Oath that medical professionals undertake during their training. This study did in fact do physical and mental harm to the subjects, thereby violating this oath. The well-being of the research subjects was not secured in this study, and as mentioned previously was even encouraged to be taken away from them. There was no element of beneficence or anything of the like other than the experiment ending early which would give this study any sense of being ethical. The argument that psychology research differs from other types of medical research can only be based on loose grounds. The fact that in any study where human volunteers are being researched should have the same protections in place for the people, not merely test subjects, involved.

References:

Bartels, J. (3/9/2015). The Stanford prison experiment in introductory psychology textbooks: A content analysis. Sage Journals. Retrieved fromhttp://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1475725714568007

Emanuel, E.J., Grady, C., Crouch, R.A., Reidar, K.L., Miller, F.G. & Wendler, D. (2011). The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

McLeod, J. (2017). Stanford Prison Experiment. Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/zimbardo.html

Office of Human Research Protections, (2018). Nuremberg Code: Directives for Human Experimentation. Retrieved from https://ori.hhs.gov/chapter-3-The-Protection-of-Human-Subjects-nuremberg-code-directives-human-experimentation

Office of Human Research Protections. (2018, January 15). The Belmont Report. Retrieved from https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/belmont-report/read-the-belmont-report/index.html#xbenefit

For your final Portfolio Project, you will write a paper detailing a risk management plan based on the following case study scenario. Your goal is to identify areas of risk and healthcare/medical error, and to safeguard future patients from having their safety compromised in a manner similar to what occurred in this case study. Your risk management plan must include:

• A root-cause analysis
• At least three recommendation(s) for improvement
• Two recommendations for how this situation could be avoided
• Identification of all roles in your analysis
• Quality, risk, and performance improvement diagrams and charts to support your analysis (e.g., a fishbone or other visual form of root-cause analysis, Pareto chart, tables, etc.)
• Commentary that relates the case broadly to what you have learned throughout the course and describes the roles played by quality management and regulation to prevent unfortunate occurrences such as the case described

Your paper should meet the following requirements:

• Be 10-12 pages in length, not including the cover or reference pages.
• Be formatted according to APA Requirements.
• Provide support for your statements with in-text citations from a minimum of eight (8) scholarly references—four (4) of these references must be from outside sources and four (4) may be from course readings, lectures, and textbooks. 
• Utilize headings to organize the content in your work.

The case is as follows:

You are the Chief Risk Management Officer for a large metropolitan not-for-profit teaching hospital. You have been assigned this case by the Chief Executive Officer due to the potentially sensitive nature of the situation and the CEO’s personal interest in disadvantaged and ethnic minority population groups. Your goal is to do a thorough risk analysis and create a risk-management plan as part of the overall quality management program for this facility based on the following case scenario.

A female patient, age 25 years, presents in the emergency room with pain in the right side of her lower abdomen. Her last name is Jonesky. She has been ill and vomiting for two days. The patient is triaged and asked to take a seat in the emergency room waiting area until she can be seen. Additionally, the patient speaks only Russian, and her husband, who is the only family member with her, speaks limited English, with Russian being his primary language.

Several hours have passed and the patient is still sitting in the emergency room, in extreme pain. The husband approaches the emergency room desk to try to communicate that his wife is worsening and in extreme pain. After several minutes of discourse, the patient is taken back into an examination room to be seen.

She is diagnosed with appendicitis and requires removal of her appendix. She is sent to a holding area outside of the operating room where she will wait to be taken into surgery. Upon her arrival, a nurse asks her name and due to the fact that the patient only speaks Russian, her name, “Jonesky” sounds very much like “Jones” to the nurse. Then anesthesiologist arrives and interviews the patient. Simultaneously, another emergency patient is brought into the holding area of the operating room. Her name is Samantha Jones. Samantha has fallen down icy steps and has broken her left ankle, which now needs to be repaired. This is a very busy night for the operating room. Additional staff members, who have already worked a full eight-hour shift, are called in to attend to this second case.

Both patients are interviewed and taken into ORs for their procedures. Since it is late, both surgeons do the required time-out procedure, but not as judiciously as they would have during the day. Staff members in attendance for both cases implicitly go along with their surgeon’s order and surgery following a time-out procedure that was not complete. As the first surgical procedure begins, the surgeon makes an incision into Mrs. Jonesky’s ankle and there is no sign of any broken bone. He realizes there is a problem. Additionally, in the second OR, the surgeon operating on Samantha Jones makes an incision and finds no sign of appendicitis. Both surgeons operated on wrong sites due to incorrect identification of the patient.