Clinical research managers have many scientific, legal, institutional, financial, and ethical responsibilities, such as ensuring the quality and integrity of the research process, protecting human subjects, complying with regulations, and using resources effectively. To fulfill these responsibilities, clinical research managers must exhibit leadership and moral integrity. In this article, we examine the ethics of clinical research managers. We explicate ethical concepts and principles that apply to managing clinical research, identify the ethical duties of managers, explore ethical issues that arise in clinical research management at the trenches, describe a process for making ethical decisions, and analyze a hypothetical case scenario.
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