Ethics in Emergency Medical Services – Who Cares? An exploratory analysis from Australia

Abstract

Due to the complexity, stressfulness and often the life threatening nature of tasks that ambulance professionals have to deal with every day, ethical decision making in Emergency Services is a daily challenge. An Australian Association of Ambulance Professionals undertook a project of research to identify the individual ethics profile of members and their perspective on organization ethics and ethical conflict to better understand apparent conflict in ethical values between members and their employer organization. Due to the exploratory nature of this study two types of data (quantitative and qualitative) were gathered through a self-administrated questionnaire of members and semi-structured interviews. Results indicate a gap between individual ethical decisionmaking approaches and organizational ethical decision-making in EMS. This has implications for EMS in how it maintains it organizational processes yet retains its professional staff. Further, managing the stress and conflict levels of staff may be important in order to ensure current standards of care are maintained.