Schmidt Kurt W
Zentrum für Ethik in der Medizin, Wilhelm-Epstein-Str. 4, 60431 Frankfurt/M., Deutschland.
Ethik Med. 2021;33(2):233-242. doi: 10.1007/s00481-020-00596-w. Epub 2020 Sep 2.
Employees in the healthcare sector are expected to deal professionally with patients and their families at all times. Accompanying them through existential crises, disease, dying, and death is highly demanding. A situation which employees can experience as particularly stressful is when a decision needs to be made and they find themselves in a moral conflict or dilemma.
Such situations range from extremely rare triage decisions to comparably "everyday" involvement in (alleged) medical error.
In some cases the outcome for patients and their families, who had placed their trust in the institution, can be tragic, and this already burdensome situation for employees is further exacerbated when there is no credible concept established within the organization for dealing with such events in a structured manner, and when colleagues and their superiors have little to no knowledge about helpful support options.
医疗保健部门的员工需要时刻以专业的态度对待患者及其家属。陪伴他们度过生存危机、疾病、临终和死亡是一项极具挑战性的任务。员工可能会感到特别有压力的一种情况是，当需要做出决策时，他们发现自己陷入了道德冲突或困境。
这种情况从极其罕见的分诊决策到相对“日常”的（所谓）医疗差错介入不等。
在某些情况下，那些信任该机构的患者及其家属的结局可能是悲惨的，而当组织内部没有建立起以结构化方式处理此类事件的可靠概念，且同事及其上级对有用的支持选项几乎一无所知时，这种本就令员工负担沉重的情况会进一步恶化。
