A Possible Diagnostic of the State of Health of Ethics Management in the Hospitals in Romania an Exploratory Study

Abstract

Background . Our article presents the results of an empirical study having as objective the identification of the preoccupations for the management of ethics, the formal or informal ethics programme existing in the practice of the Romanian hospitals. Methods . Our exploratory qualitative research is based on semi-structured interviews, conducted in 2016 in the hospitals in Romania. A number of 19 respondents from nine hospital units in several towns in the country have participated. Results. Our research reveals that the ethics management system in Romanian hospitals is strongly limited to the applying methods and tools to comply to the legal requirements for the healthcare sector activity and mostly focused to the activity of the Council of ethics (organism founded by law, that functions in the hospitals), but a holistic and integrated approach is still missing. Conclusions . As a general conclusion, we notice the managers‘ awareness of the importance and need to implement an ethics management system, but this is a field that requires more attention and clearly improvement in the Romanian hospital units in terms of vision and systemic approach, ethical culture and leadership, ethics system, policies and programs. The study could be useful first to all hospital managers in improving the global performance and ethical reputation of their unit, but also to public authorities that adopt policies in healthcare system, to accreditation bodies and academics interested in this research area.