Overview of ethical issues perceived by allied health professionals in the workplace.

Allied health professionals comprise a major segment of the total health care workforce. Recent advances in technology combined with increasingly complex patient-related issues require health care practitioners to be aware of and sensitive to bioethical dilemmas. This research assesses how allied health personnel perceive ethical issues in health care, and depicts their involvement in ethical situations. A combined qualitative and quantitative methodology was employed with thirty-six case study subjects at a large mid-west urban medical center. Two-thirds of the population were female and more than half of the sample had formal training in bioethics. Several ethical themes emerged in the workplace with allied health practitioners including issues of team-work, confidentiality, assessment, and documentation. Professional judgment was expressed as essential by all of the subjects. The allied health professionals perceived the need for structured coursework as a link between formal training and the health care setting to maintain the dynamics of the provider-patient relationship.