Ethical nursing conflicts in primary health care and coping strategies

Abstract

Considering that there are few studies on ethical conflicts, ultimately related to primary health care, it is deemed urgent to study the ethical aspects which are part of nursing professionals’ practice. Thus, the goals of this study were as follows: to identify the ethical conflicts experienced by nursing professionals at a Health Unit with Family Health Care Strategy and discuss the coping strategies used. It is a qualitative research study which used Care-Converging Research (CCA) as a methodological background, being held in 2010 with thirteen nursing professionals from a Health Unit in Curitiba/Paraná State, Brazil, whose data were collected by means of individual, audio-taped interviews. From the analysis, two major categories emerged: violation of professional confidentiality and violence against elders. Two workshops, highlighting these themes, were held, clearing up remaining doubts and designing possible strategies to solve ethical problems. CCA stood out as an important strategy for nursing education practice as professionals elucidated issues related to the most recurrent subjects, which leads to recommend more approaches on ethics with health professionals by means of this methodological background.