Background: Ambulance nurse education in Sweden is a one-year master’s degree program for registered nurses leading to a postgraduate diploma in specialist nursing. Ambulance nurses face unpredictable and ethically challenging situations with multi-dimensional suffering, requiring the ability to provide medical care and simultaneously creating a trustful relationship. Students undergoing their specialist education face the same challenges.
Aim: The aim was to describe ambulance nurse students’ (ANS) experiences of ethical problems in patient relationships during clinical studies.
Method: Written exams (n=69) in ANS’ clinical placements studies were collected between 2014-2016 in three courses. In the exam the ANS were asked to describe and problematize a self-experienced ethical problem in the care relationship with a specific patient. The thematic analysis commenced with being familiarized with the text as a whole before condensation and coding. The exams were read and re-read several times. After coding followed further analysis, re-analysis and validation in several linear and circular steps to finally compile sub-themes and themes.
Results: Ethical problems emerged as six themes; 1) Insecurity in considering patient autonomy, 2) Conflicting assessments of the patients best, 3) Inadequate access to patient narratives, 4) Absence of trustful relationships, 5) Disturbance of patient focus and 6) Limited possibility to provide proper care.
Conclusions and implications: The result emphasizes ethical problem within patient-relationships in the ambulance care as multifaceted and strongly connected to patient’s autonomy. Outgoing from the results an intervention project regarding older patients’ autonomy in ambulance care started in January 2019.