Table 4 Categories of ethical CIRS cases: staff communication and corporate culture (focus on staff and organization)
From: Enhancing patient safety by integrating ethical dimensions to Critical Incident Reporting Systems
Potential issue/subcategory | Example | Potentially related ethical principles |
|---|---|---|
Team communication of errors or incidents | Decisions that interns made during night shifts are convicted hard and unfair by a senior physician the next morning. As a consequence, only the non-ambiguous cases are presented. Difficult decisions are delayed | Beneficence Non-maleficence |
Critical incident stress debriefing; second victim | A resident has confused two medications and does not dare to disclose the error because she works in a climate of fear. Consequently, the patient suffers from mysterious symptoms (side effects of the wrong medication) and gets many futile diagnostics | Beneficence Non-maleficence |
Conflicting interdisciplinary medical objectives | Interdisciplinary decisions in a hospital are delayed because of personal conflicts between the surgeon and internal medicine specialists | Beneficence Non-maleficence |