Mapping the Normative Terrain of An Ethics of Care, 2012

This project is based on an assumption that health care prioritisations raise substantially ethical difficult choices. Further it is presumed that an ethics of care which take the relation to particular patients to be salient might provide important normative arguments to the benefit of individual and relational care in today's health care. Moreover, increased knowledge about the priority setting in clinical contact with the patient will contribute significantly to the debate about priority setting on the health-political level altogether. A third assumption is that the debates concerning priority setting have failed to address important ethical questions considering the moral dilemmas that occur in concrete clinical situations of scarcity. The aim is to illuminate these assumptions. The problem statements are:
- What ethical considerations and moral dilemmas of care and justice are prominent in health care prioritisation in different areas of health care?
- How can an ethics of care contribute to the debate about health care prioritising?

The revised project for post doctoral fellowship consists of two substudies:1) One part will perform in-depth interviews with a total of approximately 15 nurses and physicians working in nursing homes, as well as emergency and surgical wards. Another part of the post-doctoral study, consists of a survey that will be sent to 1000 nurses and doctors working in nursing homes, emergency as well as surgical wards. The questionnaire for the survey will be based on findings from all the interviews. The findings from both sub studies will be published in international journals of medical ethics.