PARTIAL AND IMPARTIAL ETHICAL REASONING IN HEALTH-CARE PROFESSIONALS

Objectives - To determine the relationship between ethical reasoning a nd gender and occupation among a group of male and female nurses and d octors. Design - Partialist and impartialist forms of ethical reasonin g were defined and singled out as being central to the difference betw een what is known as the ''care'' moral orientation (Gilligan) and the ''justice'' orientation (Kohlberg). A structured questionnaire based on four hypothetical moral dilemmas involving combinations of (health care) professional, nonprofessional, life-threatening and non-life-thr eatening situations, was piloted and then mailed to a randomly selecte d sample of doctors and nurses. Setting - 400 doctors from Victoria, a nd 200 doctors and 400 nurses from New South Wales. Results - 178 doct ors and 122 nurses returned completed questionnaires. 115 doctors were male, 61 female; 50 nurses were male and 72 were female. It was hypot hesised that there would be an association between feminine subjects a nd partialist reasoning and masculine subjects and impartialist reason ing It was also hypothesised that nurses would adopt a partialist appr oach to reasoning and doctors an impartialist approach. No relationshi p between any of these variables was observed.