Developing personal values: trainees' attitudes toward strikes by health care providers

Area of Science:

• Medical Ethics
• Health Policy
• Professionalism

Background:

• Healthcare providers, particularly physicians, experience ethical conflicts between patient care obligations and systemic improvements.
• Strikes by healthcare professionals present ethical tensions, especially when professional self-interest intersects with potential patient harm.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the ethical tensions surrounding healthcare provider strikes.
• To propose a conceptual model for factors influencing healthcare providers' decisions to strike.
• To examine the relationship between training level and attitudes toward job actions.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of ethical tensions in healthcare strikes.
• Development of a conceptual model for strike decision-making.
• Exploration of trainee attitudes towards job actions.

Main Results:

• Healthcare provider strikes create ethical conflicts between immediate patient care and future patient well-being.
• A conceptual model identifies personal ethics, agency, and context as key factors in strike decisions.
• Trainees' attitudes toward strikes evolve during education, influenced by developing professional values.

Conclusions:

• Open discussions on the ethics of healthcare strikes and conflict resolution are crucial in medical education.
• Integrating these discussions enhances professionalism and systems-based practice training for future healthcare providers.
• Understanding the evolving attitudes of trainees towards job actions is vital for professional development.