Team members perspectives on conflicts in clinical ethics committees

Background:Clinical ethics committees have been broadly implemented in university hospitals, general hospitals and nursing homes. To ensure the quality of ethics consultations, evaluation should be mandatory.Research question/aim:The aim of this article is to evaluate the perspectives of all people involved and the process of implementation on the wards.Research design and participants:The data were collected in two steps: by means of non-participating observation of four ethics case consultations and by open-guided interviews with 28 participants. Data analysis was performed according to grounded theory.Ethical considerations:The study received approval from the local Ethics Commission (registration no.: 32/11/10).Findings:‘Communication problems’ and ‘hierarchical team conflicts’ proved to be the main aspects that led to ethics consultation, involving two factors: unresolvable differences arise in the context of team conflicts on the ward and unresolvable differences prevent a solution being found. Hier...