ETHICAL REASONING IN MIXED NURSE-PHYSICIAN GROUPS

Objectives - To study the ethical reasoning of nurses and physicians, and to assess whether or not modified focus groups are a valuable tool for this purpose. Design - Discussion of cases in modified focus grou ps, each consisting of three physicians and three nurses. The discussi on was taped and analysed by content analysis. Setting - Five departme nts of internal medicine at Danish hospitals. Sample - Seven discussio n groups. Main measurements - Ethical content of statements, style of statements, time used by each participant. Results - Danish physicians and nurses do not differ in the kind of ethical reasoning they use, b ut physicians use more of the discussion time than nurses, they use a more assertive style of argumentation, and the solutions chosen are us ually first put forward by physicians. Conclusion - The results and in formal comparisons with similar data from long qualitative interviews indicated that groups of this kind are a useful tool for gathering dat a on ethical reasoning.