Associating bounded ethicality and quality decisions amongst medical professionals

Abstract

The decision-making process is not as straightforward as it might seem, but it is rather influenced by several factors that can determine whether the final choice an individual will undertake will correspond to an ethical or unethical action. This holds not just in general life situations, but also in more specific contexts such as healthcare, where emotions must not predominate over critical thinking. While it has been proven that both individuals and decisions are susceptible to biases and are ethically bound, further investigation is required to fully comprehend the current state of the healthcare sector. Because of this, the research aims to understand to what extent junior medical professionals engage in bounded ethicality, and how this impacts on quality decisions. The investigation was conducted by using a mixed methodology, which combined the vignettes representing four fictitional scenarios and the standard questionnaire of quality decisions. While the former was made up of both a Likert-type scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree and a space where the junior doctors were asked to provide a brief explanation of the selected score, the questionnaire presented five different scores: Not at all, Sometimes, Frequently, Often and Always. In this respect, the sample was composed of six junior doctors, three females and three males, who had been practicing medicine for a period comprised between one month and one year. Additionally, the collected data was examined from a qualitative and quantitative perspective. The results obtained have shown that junior professionals do engage in bounded ethicality in some cases, especially when it is particularly complex to identify an ethical dilemma. This has been supported by examining the qualitative data of the investigation, namely the explanations given by each participant for every presented scenario. Additionally, the proposition that bounded ethicality is not associated with quality decisions was not upheld through the quantitative analysis, which has shown that instead of being convergent, the results are mostly divergent. Besides exploring the topic of bounded ethicality in the healthcare context, the investigation conducted by the researcher has contributed to an important understanding: the further development of ethical guidelines and theoretical frameworks is essential for the improvement of the ethical decision-making process in healthcare for both professionals and patients who deserve the best possible care.