INTENSIVE-CARE - SITUATIONS OF ETHICAL DIFFICULTY

Twenty enrolled nurses (ENs), 20 registered nurses (RNs) and 20 physic ians working in intensive care in northern Sweden narrated 255 stories about their experience of being in ethically difficult care situation s. The ENs' stories mainly concerned problems relating to relationship ethics, the stories narrated by the physicians mainly concerned probl ems relating to action ethics, while the RNs' stories gave equal atten tion to both kinds of problems. The most common theme of both the RNs' and the physicians' stories was that of too much treatment. An obviou s similarity between the ENs, RNs and physicians was that they saw the mselves as equally lacking in influence in ethically difficult care si tuations. The only apparent difference between the three groups, howev er, was that the ENs brought up relationship problems more often than the others. Thus, the differences between the RNs and the physicians w ere fewer than usually reported in the literature. This might be relat ed to the specialization of intensive care