Abstract
Background:
In accordance with ethical guidelines for nurses, leaders for nurse services in general
are responsible for facilitating professional development and ethical reflection and to
use ethical guidelines as a management tool. Research describes a gap between employees’
and nurse leaders’ perceptions of priorities.
Objective:
The purpose of this article is to gain deeper insight into how nurses as leaders in
somatic hospitals describe ethical challenges.
Design and method:
We conducted individual, quality interview with 10 nurse leaders, nine females and one
male nurse aged 34–64 years. We used a hermeneutical approach to analyse the data.
Ethical considerations:
The participants received oral and written information about the study. Participation
in the study was voluntary, and the participants were given the opportunity to withdraw.
All of them gave written consent. The Norwegian Centre for Research Data approved the
research project. In addition, the head of the hospitals gave permission to conduct our
study.
Findings:
Four main areas were identified: deficient ethical language, conflicting demands on
nurse leaders regarding staff management, concerns regarding young nurses’ ethical
consciousness and restricting factors on the creation of a climate of ethics. The nurse
leaders experienced considerable pressure. An unexpected finding was the lack of – and
even disregard for – an ethical language.
Discussion and conclusion:
It is crucial to recognise ethics in all types of nursing approaches and to make it
explicit. Ethical language must be implemented in nursing education. It must be
recognised and used in clinical practice.
Recommendations:
We recommend further research be conducted into how nurses understand the concept of
ethics and how to incorporate ethical principles into clinical nursing and nurse
leadership.
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