Developing Ethical Competence in Health Care Organizations

Increased work complexity and financial strain in the health care sector have led to higher demands on staff to handle ethical issues. These demands can elicit stress reactions, that is, moral distress. One way to support professionals in handling ethical dilemmas is education and training in ethics...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Kälvemark Sporrong, Sofia (Author) ; Arnetz, Bengt (Author) ; Hansson, Mats G (Author) ; Westerholm, Peter (Author) ; Höglund, Anna T. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Sage 2007
In: Nursing ethics
Year: 2007, Volume: 14, Issue: 6, Pages: 825-837
Further subjects:B Clinical Practice
B pharmacy practice
B Moral Distress
B ethics rounds
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Summary:Increased work complexity and financial strain in the health care sector have led to higher demands on staff to handle ethical issues. These demands can elicit stress reactions, that is, moral distress. One way to support professionals in handling ethical dilemmas is education and training in ethics. This article reports on a controlled prospective study evaluating a structured education and training program in ethics concerning its effects on moral distress. The results show that the participants were positive about the training program. Moral distress did not change significantly. This could be interpreted as competence development, with no effects on moral distress. Alternatively, the result could be attributed to shortcomings of the training program, or that it was too short, or it could be due to the evaluation instrument used. Organizational factors such as management involvement are also crucial. There is a need to design and evaluate ethics competence programs concerning their efficacy.
ISSN:1477-0989
Contains:Enthalten in: Nursing ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1177/0969733007082142