Abstract
There is an increasing body of research on what kind of ethical challenges health care professionals experience regarding the quality of care. In the Netherlands the Dutch Health Care Inspectorate is responsible for monitoring and regulating the quality of health care. No research exists on what kind of ethical challenges inspectors experience during the regulation process itself. In a pilot study we used moral case deliberation as method in order to reflect upon inspectors’ ethical challenges. The objective of this paper is to give an overview of the ethical challenges which health care inspectors encounter in their daily work. A thematic qualitative analysis was performed on cases (n = 69) that were collected from health care inspectors in a moral case deliberation pilot study. Eight themes were identified in health care regulation. These can be divided in two categories: work content and internal collaboration. The work of the health care inspectorate is morally loaded and our recommendation is that some form of ethics support is provided for health care inspectors.
Highlights
There is an increasing body of research on the field of ethical challenges in healthcare1 e.g. in the care of patients with ALS (Seitzer et al 2016), in elderly and dementia care (Hasselkus 1997; Van der Dam 2011; Bolmsjoet al. 2006), in long-term care (Elander et al 1993), and in mental healthcare (Liegeois and Van Audenhove 2005; Molewijk et al 2008a, b, 2015)
A thematic qualitative analysis was performed on cases (n = 69) that were collected from health care inspectors in a moral case deliberation pilot study
In this paper we described a thematic analysis of cases from a pilot study in which moral case deliberation (MCD) has been introduced in the Dutch Health Care Inspectorate (IGZ) in order to support the IGZ employees in dealing with their ethical challenges when monitoring and regulating the quality of health care
Summary
There is an increasing body of research on the field of ethical challenges in healthcare e.g. in the care of patients with ALS (Seitzer et al 2016), in elderly and dementia care (Hasselkus 1997; Van der Dam 2011; Bolmsjoet al. 2006), in long-term care (Elander et al 1993), and in (community) mental healthcare (Liegeois and Van Audenhove 2005; Molewijk et al 2008a, b, 2015). The Dutch Health Care Inspectorate (IGZ) monitors and regulates the quality of healthcare in the Netherlands. This poses the question as to whether inspectors of the Health Care Inspectorate do not experience ethical challenges in monitoring the quality of care and, if so, whether these ethical challenges are comparable to the ethical challenges of health care professionals in general. We pose the question as to what kind of ethical challenges do the inspectors of the Dutch Health Care Inspectorate experience when supervising the quality of care?
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