The autonomy of nurses in high dependency care. Conflicts of loyalties and their consequences for patient care.

The aim of this study is to enquire into the kind of ethical dilemmas reported by nurses in the high dependency health care sector. Nurses from different intensive care units at one British hospital were interviewed. The interviews, which were tape recorded, show that nurses often found themselves in conflict between the patient's interests and those of other people, such as physicians, relatives, other patients, colleagues, etc. Competing loyalties and role conflicts contributed to complicate the nurses' ethical problems.