ETHICS IN HEALTH-CARE MANAGEMENT - DEVELOPING AN INSTRUMENT TO ASSESSHUMANE CARING

dThe care of patients should be professional, human and humane. This i s an ethical issue. The words human (inhimillinen) and humane (ihmisla heinen) have different meanings in the Finnish language. At Kuopio Uni versity Hospital (1200 beds), in Finland, it was decided to provide pa tients with professional and humane caring. Ethical values differ for different groups of people. Therefore humane caring was assessed by qu estioning both hospital patients (n = 160) and staff (n = 196). The da ta were subjected to content analysis. The result was that the values obtained for both patients and staff were similar. Five descriptive ca tegories of humane caring emerged. To discover what kind of caring was provided for patients, the categories were operationalized into 66 cr iteria and a questionnaire was drawn up on the basis of these criteria . The data for evaluation of the quality of taring were collected from patients (n = 1708). The data were analysed using cross-tabulations a nd the chi-squared test; sum variables were calculated for the five st andards. The results suggest that special attention should be paid to vulnerable patient groups (e.g. the elderly and the young). One means of ethical management is to support our staff to care more humanely by discussing with them the results of this study setting standards and criteria for humane caring and what this means in practice. It is hope d our caring will therefore be more humane.