Living with ethical dilemmas : the ethical reasoning of surgeons and nurses in surgical units
Year: 2010
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The aim of this thesis is to illuminate surgeons’ and nurses’ experiences of living with ethical dilemmas in their work. The thesis comprises the kinds of ethical dilemmas experienced from the practitioners’ own point of view, and explores their way of reasoning, deliberating and acting in ethically difficult situations, including the meaning they assign to their experiences.\nThe data collection consists of open-ended narrative interviews with ten surgeons and ten registered nurses at a university hospital in Norway. The transcribed interview texts were subjected to a phenomenological hermeneutical interpretation.\n The main ethical dilemmas experienced by surgeons and nurses concerned the respecting\npatients’ right to decide their own treatment and care, and act accordingly. Taking appropriate actions to rescue and sustain patients’ lives, and maintain patients’ hopes and efforts to fight\nthe disease were important concerns for surgeons and nurses. Being responsible for particular patients in life threatening and decisive circumstances made profound impressions on surgeons and nurses and challenged their outlook on life as well as their professional conduct.\n Situations when ethical dilemmas occur are characterized by complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity about the correct and best thing to do and what constitutes an ethically satisfying solution to the problem. Surgeons and nurses emphasized the importance of collegial recognition and support in order to live with the responsibility and emotional burden of\nexperiencing ethical dilemmas. Discussing and resolving ethical problems in the team, and sharing thoughts and feelings with their peers was experienced as a relief. Social\nconfirmation and recognition by the patients, relatives, colleagues, and their knowledge that the needs of patients and relatives were attended to in a morally and professionally satisfying manner increased the surgeons’ and nurses’ confidence and satisfaction in their work, and their courage to live with the responsibility for being and acting in ethically difficult\nsituations.\n Experiencing the continuous abundance of ethical difficulties in the unit provided surgeons and nurses with opportunities of learning. The kind of ethical knowledge acquired included the acceptance of ethical dilemmas as an inseparable and unavoidable feature of practice, and coming to terms both with the contingencies of human life, and their own limitations and fallibility when trying to provide high quality professional treatment. Acceptance of personal and professional limitations did not mean that surgeons and nurses had abandoned their ethical and professional commitment of trying to maintain and improve the quality of treatment and care to the patients in the unit.
Author: Kirsti Torjuul
Language: English
Topic: Ethics in medical practice
Subfield: General Health Professions
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1502781077