Ethical dilemmas in home health care: A social work perspective

The survey in this article examined several factors related to the frequenc y and difficulty of resolving four ethical conflicts in a national sample o f 364 home health care social workers. Ethical conflicts regarding the asse ssment of mental competence, self-determination, and access to services wer e moderately frequent and difficult to resolve, whereas conflicts over impl ementing advance directives were infrequent and not difficult to resolve. E ach ethical conflict involved multiple stakeholders. Multiple regression an alyses revealed significant predictors of the frequency and difficulty of r esolving the ethical conflicts. Implications for practice and administratio n in home health care and social work education are discussed.