Desperately Seeking Ethics: Reflections on attending a research ethics committee meeting

Liz Charalambous is a nurse and PhD student. She tweets at @lizcharalambou and is a regular guest blogger for the BGS.

I am in the second year of a PhD researching volunteers in dementia and acute hospitals. The project came about as part of my clinical work as a staff nurse in older person acute care. It was while working on a prevention of delirium research study, I realised that volunteers could play an important role.

The first year of my PhD has been spent mainly completing modules and designing the project from scratch. I have lost track of how many drafts of countless documents have been sent to my long suffering supervisors as they guide me towards refining my ideas, sifting through my thousands of words to put together a robust study which will stand up to scrutiny.

Clinical academia: the enigmatic puzzle

Liz Charalambous is a qualified nurse on a female, acute medical HCOP (Health Care for Older People) ward at Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham University Hospital Trust. She tweets at @lizcharalambou and is a regular guest blogger for the BGS.

Six months into a PhD to research the concept of volunteers in dementia and acute hospital wards, it has become apparent to me that there are a number of ways this area can be explored. Should I do a case study and examine the directorate as a whole? Or would ethnography be better to allow me an understanding of the organisational culture? Maybe a phenomenology study to understand the lived experience of those involved? How about a biographical account of a volunteer or maybe grounded theory to discover emerging theory?