Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases

The Korean Academy of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases (대한결핵및호흡기학회)
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Ethics in the Intensive Care Unit

  • Moon, Jae Young (Department of Internal Medicine, Chungnam National University Hospital, Chungnam National University School of Medicine) ;
  • Kim, Ju-Ock (Department of Internal Medicine, Chungnam National University Hospital, Chungnam National University School of Medicine)
  • Received : 2015.02.02
  • Accepted : 2015.02.23
  • Published : 2015.04.30
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Abstract

The intensive care unit (ICU) is the most common place to die. Also, ethical conflicts among stakeholders occur frequently in the ICU. Thus, ICU clinicians should be competent in all aspects for ethical decision-making. Major sources of conflicts are behavioral issues, such as verbal abuse or poor communication between physicians and nurses, and end-of-life care issues including a lack of respect for the patient's autonomy. The ethical conflicts are significantly associated with the job strain and burn-out syndrome of healthcare workers, and consequently, may threaten the quality of care. To improve the quality of care, handling ethical conflicts properly is emerging as a vital and more comprehensive area. The ICU physicians themselves need to be more sensitive to behavioral conflicts and enable shared decision making in end-of-life care. At the same time, the institutions and administrators should develop their processes to find and resolve common ethical problems in their ICUs.

Keywords

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