Ethical values in emergency medical services : A pilot study

• Background: Ambulance professionals often address conflicts between ethical values. As individuals’values represent basic convictions of what is right or good and motivate behaviour, research is neededto understand their value profiles.Objectives: To translate and adapt the Managerial Values Profile to Spanish and Swedish, and measure thepresence of utilitarianism, moral rights and/or social justice in ambulance professionals’ value profiles inSpain and Sweden.Methods: The instrument was translated and culturally adapted. A content validity index was calculated.Pilot tests were carried out with 46 participants.Ethical considerations: This study conforms to the ethical principles for research involving humansubjects and adheres to national laws and regulations concerning informed consent and confidentiality.Findings: Spanish professionals favoured justice and Swedish professionals’ rights in their ambulanceorganizations. Both countries favoured utilitarianism least. Gender differences across countries showedthat males favoured rights. Spanish female professionals favoured justice most strongly of all.Discussion: Swedes favour rights while Spaniards favour justice. Both contexts scored low onutilitarianism focusing on total population effect, preferring the opposite, individualized approach of therights and justice perspectives. Organizational investment in a utilitarian perspective might jeopardizeambulance professionals’ moral right to make individual assessments based on the needs of the patientat hand. Utilitarianism and a caring ethos appear as stark opposites. However, a caring ethos in its turn might well involve unreasonable demands on the individual carer’s professional role. Since both the justiceand rights perspectives portrayed in the survey mainly concern relationship to the organization and peerswithin the organization, this relationship might at worst be given priority over the equal treatment andmoral rights of the patient.Conclusion: A balanced view on ethical perspectives is needed to make professionals observant and readyto act optimally – especially if these perspectives are used in patient care. Research is needed to clarify howjustice and rights are prioritized by ambulance services and whether or not these organization-related valuesare also implemented in patient care.

Subject headings

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Hälso- och sjukvårdsorganisation, hälsopolitik och hälsoekonomi (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Health Care Service and Management, Health Policy and Services and Health Economy (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Omvårdnad (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Nursing (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Prehospital ethics

Nursing

Ambulance professionals

Emergency Medical Service

ethical profiles

personal values

Omvårdnad

Health and Caring Sciences

Hälsovetenskap

Integrated Caring Science

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)