The aim of this article is to give more insight into what ethical challenges clinicians in mental healthcare experience and discuss with a Clinical Ethics Committee in psychiatry in the Region of Southern Denmark. Ethical considerations are an important part of the daily decision-making processes and thereby for the quality of care in mental healthcare. However, such ethical challenges have been given little systematic attention – both in research and in practices. A qualitative content analysis of 55 written case-reports from (...) the Clinical Ethics Committee. The Committee offers clinicians in mental healthcare structured ethical analyses of ethical challenges and makes a thorough written case-report. The ethical challenges are grouped into three overarching topics: 1. Clinicians and their relation to patients and relatives. 2. Clinicians and institutional aspects of mental healthcare 3. Clinicians and mental healthcare in a wider social context. Through presentation of illustrative examples the complexity of daily clinical life in mental healthcare becomes evident, as well as typical interests, values and arguments. This qualitative study indicates that difficult ethical challenges are an inherent part of mental healthcare that requires time, space and competence to be dealt with adequately. (shrink)

The main objective of this paper is to describe how quality of care may be improved during an involuntary admission process of patients suffering from Korsakoff's syndrome. It presents an empirically grounded analysis with different perspectives on ‘doing good’ during this process. Family carers', healthcare professionals' and legal professionals' ways of understanding and ordering this problematic situation appear very different. This could prevent patients from getting the proper care they need, with risk of more suffering and quality of life below (...) the minimum acceptable. All this possibly lead to immoral dehumanizing situations. Firstly, the background of our empirical study is sketched. Secondly, the different perspectives on ‘doing good’ are summarized and compared. Thirdly, the tensions arising from the different conceptualizations of autonomy and different types of responsibilities of the actors are clarified. A common ‘doing good’ during involuntary admission necessitates removal of any tensions within the relational network by weighing and balancing the different perspectives on autonomy and the resulting responsibilities. With this in mind, we propose a renewed time/action table for involuntary admission, which tends to address all patients' needs at the right time. The solution presented might help healthcare professionals, who are squeezed in between patients, family carers, legal professionals and overall rules, to create practices in which patients suffering from Korsakoff's syndrome can maintain their dignity and receive the care they need. Earlier interventions, timely and adequate diagnosis, and diminishment of tensions between the different actors by fine‐tuning their paradigmatic frameworks are suggested to be part of a solution. (shrink)

Background The aim was to explore how the clinical ethics committees in Norway have worked and functioned within mental health care and addiction treatment services. Methods Analysis of 256 annual reports from clinical ethics committees from 2003 to 2012 and a survey to clinicians who had used a clinical ethics committee. Results Dilemmas related to coercion, confidentiality, information, and patient autonomy dominated. The committees established only for psychiatric hospitals, had received more cases from mental health and addiction services than the (...) committees also serving somatic services. Many of the case discussions involved both somatic and mental health care, complicated legal issues as well as ethical dilemmas. Mental health care professionals that have used the clinical ethics committees evaluated the clinical ethics committees deliberation as useful. Conclusion Given the many difficult ethical dilemmas in mental health care ethics work need to be strengthened. The complexity of the cases requires varied and interdisciplinary competence and training among the clinical ethics committee members. (shrink)

Health care professionals often face moral dilemmas. Not dealing constructively with moral dilemmas can cause moral distress and can negatively affect the quality of care. Little research has been documented with methodologies meant to support professionals in care for the homeless in dealing with their dilemmas. Moral case deliberation is a method for systematic reflection on moral dilemmas and is increasingly being used as ethics support for professionals in various health-care domains. This study deals with the question: What is the (...) contribution of MCD in helping professionals in an institution for care for the homeless to deal with their moral dilemmas? A mixed-methods responsive evaluation design was used to answer the research question. Five teams of professionals from a Dutch care institution for the homeless participated in MCD three times. Professionals in care for the homeless value MCD positively. They report that MCD helped them to identify the moral dilemma/question, and that they learned from other people’s perspectives while reflecting and deliberating on the values at stake in the dilemma or moral question. They became aware of the moral dimension of moral dilemmas, of related norms and values, of other perspectives, and learned to formulate a moral standpoint. Some experienced the influence of MCD in the way they dealt with moral dilemmas in daily practice. Half of the professionals expect MCD will influence the way they deal with moral dilemmas in the future. Most of them were in favour of further implementation of MCD in their organization. (shrink)

The concepts of disease, illness and sickness capture fundamentally different aspects of phenomena related to human ailments and healthcare. The philosophy and theory of medicine are making manifold efforts to capture the essence and normative implications of these concepts. In parallel, socio-empirical studies on patients’ understanding of their situation have yielded a comprehensive body of knowledge regarding subjective perspectives on health-related statuses. Although both scientific fields provide varied valuable insights, they have not been strongly linked to each other. Therefore, the (...) article aims to scrutinise the normative-ethical implications of patient perspectives in building a bridge to the empirical ethics debates. Three potential fields of tension between the illness and the disease perspective are presented. Consequently, findings from empirical research examining patient perspectives on illness are displayed and the practical implications and associated ethical issues which arise are discussed. This leads to the conclusion that an explicit and elaborate empirical-ethical methodology is needed to deal appropriately with the complex interaction between patients’ views and the medico-professional view of disease. Kon’s four-stage model of normative-empirical collaboration is then applied against the background of empirical data on patient perceptions. Starting from this exemplary approach, the article suggests employing empirical-ethical frameworks for further research on the conceptual and normative issues, as they help to integrate perspectives from the philosophy of medicine with socio-empirical research. The combination of theoretical and empirical perspectives suggested contributes to a more nuanced discussion of the normative impact of patients’ actual understanding of illness. Further empirical research in this area would profit from explicitly considering potential ethical issues to avoid naturalistic fallacies or crypto-normative conclusions that may compromise healthcare practice. Vice versa, medico-theoretical debates could be enriched by integrating subjective views of those people who are immediately affected. (shrink)

Background Seven wards from three Norwegian mental health care institutions participated in a study in which regular ethics reflection groups focusing on coercion had been implemented and evaluated. This article presents a thematic overview of the ethical challenges identified based on a systematic qualitative analyses of 161 ethics reflection groups and some general observations on these ethical challenges. Results The ethical challenges are divided into four main thematic categories: formal coercion, informal coercion, uncertainty related to the Norwegian legislation on coercion (...) and professional role and identity. Some ethical challenges did not fit into these categories. Only 36% of the ethical challenges were related to the use of formal coercion or the interpretation of the health law. Conclusion Even within coercion regulated by law, weighing different moral values remains important to reflect upon the appropriateness of the possible use of coercion. (shrink)

Background Research on the impact of ethics reflection groups (ERG) (also called moral case deliberations (MCD)) is complex and scarce. Within a larger study, two years of ERG sessions have been used as an intervention to stimulate ethical reflection about the use of coercive measures. We studied changes in: employees’ attitudes regarding the use of coercion, team competence, user involvement, team cooperation and the handling of disagreement in teams. Methods We used panel data in a longitudinal design study to measure (...) variation in survey scores from multidisciplinary employees from seven departments within three Norwegian mental health care institutions at three time points (T0–T1–T2). Mixed models were used to account for dependence of data in persons who participated more than once. Results In total, 1068 surveys (from 817 employees who did and did not participate in ERG) were included in the analyses. Of these, 7.6% (N = 62) responded at three points in time, 15.5% (N = 127) at two points, and 76.8% (N = 628) once. On average, over time, respondents who participated in ERG viewed coercion more strongly as offending (p < 0.05). Those who presented a case in the ERG sessions showed lower scores on User Involvement (p < 0.001), Team Cooperation (p < 0.01) and Constructive Disagreement (p < 0.01). We observed significant differences in outcomes between individuals from different departments, as well as between different professions. Initial significant changes due to frequency of participation in ERG and case presentation in ERG did not remain statistically significant after adjustment for Departments and Professions. Differences were generally small in absolute terms, possibly due to the low amount of longitudinal data. Conclusions This study measured specific intervention-related outcome parameters for describing the impact of clinical ethics support (CES). Structural implementation of ERGs or MCDs seems to contribute to employees reporting a more critical attitude towards coercion. Ethics support is a complex intervention and studying changes over time is complex in itself. Several recommendations for strengthening the outcomes of future CES evaluation studies are discussed. CES evaluation studies are important, since—despite the intrinsic value of participating in ERG or MCD—CES inherently aims, and should aim, at improving clinical practices. (shrink)

The use of coercion is morally problematic and requires an ongoing critical reflection. We wondered if not knowing or being uncertain whether coercion is morally right or justified is related to professionals’ normative attitudes regarding the use of coercion. This paper describes an explorative statistical analysis based on a cross-sectional survey across seven wards in three Norwegian mental health care institutions. Descriptive analyses showed that in general the 379 respondents a) were not so sure whether coercion should be seen as (...) offending, b) agreed with the viewpoint that coercion is needed for care and security, and c) slightly disagreed that coercion could be seen as treatment. Staff did not report high rates of moral doubt related to the use of coercion, although most of them agreed there will never be a single answer to the question ‘What is the right thing to do?’. Bivariate analyses showed that the more they experienced general moral doubt and relative doubt, the more one thought that coercion is offending. Especially psychologists were critical towards coercion. We found significant differences among ward types. Respondents with decisional responsibility for coercion and leadership responsibility saw coercion less as treatment. Frequent experience with coercion was related to seeing coercion more as care and security. This study showed that experiencing moral doubt is related to some one’s normative attitude towards coercion. Future research could investigate whether moral case deliberation increases professionals’ experience of moral doubt and whether this will evoke more critical thinking and increase staff’s curiosity for alternatives to coercion. (shrink)

BackgroundIn gender-affirming medical care (GAMC), ethical challenges in decision-making are ubiquitous. These challenges are becoming more pressing due to exponentially increasing referrals, politico-legal contestation, and divergent normative views regarding decisional roles and models. Little is known, however, about what ethical challenges related to decision-making healthcare professionals (HCPs) themselves face in their daily work in GAMC and how these relate to, for example, the subjective nature of Gender Incongruence (GI), the multidisciplinary character of GAMC and the role HCPs play in assessing (...) GI and eligibility for interventions. Given the relevance and urgency of these questions, we conducted a qualitative study among HCPs providing GAMC to transgender adults in the Netherlands.MethodsIn this qualitative research, we conducted 11 semi-structured interviews between May 2020 and February 2021 with HCPs (six mental health professionals, two HCPs in endocrinology, two in plastic surgery, and one in nursing) working in two distinct GAMC settings. We purposively sampled for professional background and years of experience in GAMC. We analyzed our interview data using thematic analysis. As some respondents were more inclined to speak about what should or ought to be done to arrive at good or right decision-making, we identified both ethical challenges and norms. Furthermore, in our analysis, we differentiated between respondents’ explicit and implicit ethical challenges and norms and ascertained the specific context in which these challenges emerged.ResultsRespondents’ ethical challenges and norms centered on (1) dividing and defining decisional roles and bounds, (2) negotiating decision-making in a (multidisciplinary) team, and (3) navigating various decision-making temporalities. These themes arose in the context of uncertainties regarding (1) GAMC’s guidelines, evidence, and outcomes, as well as (2) the boundaries and assessment of GI.ConclusionsThis interview study provides detailed empirical insight into both the explicit and implicit ethical challenges that HCPs experience and their ethical norms regarding decision-making. It also describes how uncertainties and (implicit) normativities concerning GAMC and GI pre-structure the moral environment in which these challenges and norms manifest. We provide normative reflections and recommendations on handling these ethical challenges in a way that is sensitive to the context in which they arise. (shrink)

Little is known about how health care professionals deal with ethical challenges in mental health care, especially when not making use of a formal ethics support service. Understanding this is important in order to be able to support the professionals, to improve the quality of care, and to know in which way future ethics support services might be helpful.

In a clinic-wide approach to establish liberal policies, a closed psychiatric ward was planned to be opened. The leaders of the multi-professional team of this ward requested continuous ethics support during the first few months after the transition from their previously closed ward into an open one. During the process of accompanying the team through this ethically sensitive period of institutional change, several variations of ethics consultation were developed: the ‘context-adjusted’ clinical ethics support. Some ethics consultations focused on a retrospective (...) evaluation of a patient case, in other ethics consultations consolidation of a previous case discussion was worked out, and/or reflections on fundamental ethical issues were included. Based on our experiences and the feedback of the team, we consider this context-adjusted clinical ethics support as feasible and effective. (shrink)

BackgroundIn this article, the sources and features of moral distress as experienced by acute psychiatric care nurses are explored.Research designA qualitative design with 16 individual in-depth interviews was chosen. Braun and Clarke’s six analytic phases were used.Ethical considerationsApproval was obtained from the Norwegian Social Science Data Services. Participation was confidential and voluntary.FindingsBased on findings, a somewhat wider definition of moral distress is introduced where nurses experiencing being morally constrained, facing moral dilemmas or moral doubt are included. Coercive administration of medicines, (...) coercion that might be avoided and resistance to the use of coercion are all morally stressful situations. Insufficient resources, mentally poorer patients and quicker discharges lead to superficial treatment. Few staff on evening shifts/weekends make nurses worry when follow-up of the most ill patients, often suicidal, in need of seclusion or with heightened risk of violence, must be done by untrained personnel. Provision of good care when exposed to violence is morally challenging. Feelings of inadequacy, being squeezed between ideals and clinical reality, and failing the patients create moral distress. Moral distress causes bad conscience and feelings of guilt, frustration, anger, sadness, inadequacy, mental tiredness, emotional numbness and being fragmented. Others feel emotionally ‘flat’, cold and empty, and develop high blood pressure and problems sleeping. Even so, some nurses find that moral stress hones their ethical awareness.ConclusionMoral distress in acute psychiatric care may be caused by multiple reasons and cause a variety of reactions. Multifaceted ethical dilemmas, incompatible demands and proximity to patients’ suffering make nurses exposed to moral distress. Moral distress may lead to reduced quality care, which again may lead to bad conscience and cause moral distress. It is particularly problematic if moral distress results in nurses distancing and disconnecting themselves from the patients and their inner selves. (shrink)

Professionals within the mental health services face many ethical dilemmas and challenging situations regarding the use of coercion. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the significance of participating in systematic ethics reflection groups focusing on ethical challenges related to coercion. In 2013 and 2014, 20 focus group interviews with 127 participants were conducted. The interviews were tape recorded and transcribed verbatim. The analysis is inspired by the concept of ‘bricolage’ which means our approach was inductive. Most participants report (...) positive experiences with participating in ethics reflection groups: A systematic and well-structured approach to discuss ethical challenges, increased consciousness of formal and informal coercion, a possibility to challenge problematic concepts, attitudes and practices, improved professional competence and confidence, greater trust within the team, more constructive disagreement and room for internal critique, less judgmental reactions and more reasoned approaches, and identification of potential for improvement and alternative courses of action. On several wards, the participation of psychiatrists and psychologists in the reflection groups was missing. The impact of the perceived lack of safety in reflection groups should not be underestimated. Sometimes the method for ethics reflection was utilised in a rigid way. Direct involvement of patients and family was missing. This focus group study indicates the potential of ethics reflection groups to create a moral space in the workplace that promotes critical, reflective and collaborative moral deliberations. Future research, with other designs and methodologies, is needed to further investigate the impact of ethics reflection groups on improving health care practices. (shrink)