title: Goals of clinical ethics support: perceptions of Dutch healthcare institutions.
abstract: In previous literature, ethicists mention several goals of Clinical Ethics Support (CES). It is unknown what key persons in healthcare institutions see as main--and sub-goals of CES. This article presents the goals of CES as perceived by board members and members of ethics support staff. This is part of a Dutch national research using a mixed methods design with questionnaires, focus groups and interviews. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed and combined in an iterative process. Four main clusters of goals were found: 1) encouraging an ethical climate, 2) fostering an accountable and transparent organization, 3) developing professionalism and a final goal, overarching the previous three, 4) good care. Most important sub-goals of CES were: attention for ethical issues, raising awareness of ethical issues, fostering ethical reflection and supporting employees. The article ends with a discussion on the desirability to further operationalize the general goal of good care, the context-boundedness of our findings and the need to relate goals of CES to the features of organizational cultures to further improve the integration of CES in healthcare institutions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Humanities, The EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research, VU University Medical Centre, Van der Boechorststraat 7, 1081 BT, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, l.dauwerse@vumc.nl.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dauwerse
authors.forename: T A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Abma
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Molewijk
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Widdershoven
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000941:ethics*; D026690:Ethics, Clinical; D004991:Ethics, Institutional; D006040:Goals; D006296:Health Services / Q000941:ethics*; D006801:Humans; D009426:Netherlands; D036301:Qualitative Research