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Oral Health Assessment by Lay Personnel for Older Adults
Published on: February 2, 2020
Moral orientation of elderly persons: considering ethical dilemmas in health care
1School of Nursing, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, USA.
Abstract:
Knowledge about moral development and elderly persons is very limited. A hermeneutical interpretative study was conducted with healthy elderly persons (n = 20) in order to explore and describe their moral orientation based on the paradigms of justice (Kohlberg) and care (Gilligan). The types of moral reasoning, dominance, alignment and orientation were determined. All but one participant included both types of reasoning when discussing an ethical conflict. None of the men's moral reasoning was dominated by caring, but justice dominated the reasoning of four women. The implications for ethical decision-making and future research are discussed.
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