Beneficence: Summary
The Belmont principle of beneficence involves maximizing possible benefits and minimizing possible harms to research participants.
Issues covered under Beneficence include:
- Protections against risks
- Definition of minimal risk
- Methods of weighing risks against anticipated benefits
- Potential benefits for the research participants
- The use of compensation for participation in research
- Equipoise and need for there to be genuine uncertainty about whether one treatment is superior to another
- Privacy & Confidentiality of research participants and research data
- Use of coded private information to protect confidentiality
- Use of an IRB to provide oversight for research involving human subjects
- Situations that allow for an IRB expedited review procedure
- Data and Safety monitoring for clinical trials
