Ethical reasoning in mixed nurse-physician groups

To study the ethical reasoning of nurses and physicians, and to assess whether or not modified focus groups are a valuable tool for this purpose.

Discussion of cases in modified focus groups, each consisting of three physicians and three nurses. The discussion was taped and analysed by content analysis.

Five departments of internal medicine at Danish hospitals.

Seven discussion groups.

Ethical content of statements, style of statements, time used by each participant.

Danish physicians and nurses do not differ in the kind of ethical reasoning they use, but physicians use more of the discussion time than nurses, they use a more assertive style of argumentation, and the solutions chosen are usually first put forward by physicians.

The results and informal comparisons with similar data from long qualitative interviews indicate that groups of this kind are a useful tool for gathering data on ethical reasoning.