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Background: Ethically difficult situations are frequently encountered by healthcare professionals. Moral case deliberation is one form of clinical ethics support, which has the goal to support staff to manage ethical difficulties. However, little is known which difficult situations healthcare teams need to discuss.

Aim: To explore which kinds of ethically difficult situations interprofessional healthcare teams raise during moral case deliberation.

Research design: A series of 70 moral case deliberation sessions were audio-recorded in 10 Swedish workplaces. A descriptive, qualitative approach was applied, using thematic content analysis.

Ethical considerations: An advisory statement specifying no objections to the study was provided from an Ethical Review Board, and consent to be recorded was assumed by virtue of participation in the moral case deliberation.

Findings: Three themes emerged: powerlessness over managing difficult interactions with patients and next-of-kin, unease over unsafe and unequal care, and uncertainty over who should have power over care decisions. The powerlessness comprised feelings of insufficiency, difficulties to respond or manage patient's/next-of-kin's emotional needs or emotional outbursts and discouragement over motivating patients not taking responsibility for themselves. They could be uncertain over the patient's autonomy, who should have power over life and death, disclosing the truth or how much power next-of-kin should have.

Discussion: The findings suggest that the nature of the ethically difficult situations brought to moral case deliberations contained more relational-oriented ethics than principle-based ethics, were permeated by emotions and the uncertainties were pervaded by power aspects between stakeholders.

Conclusion: MCD can be useful in understanding the connection between ethical issues and emotions from a team perspective.

Moral case deliberation is one form of clinical ethics support, and there seems to be different ways of facilitating thedialogue. This paper aimed to explore the personal experiences of Swedish facilitators of their role in moral casedeliberations. Being a facilitator was understood through the metaphor of sailing: against the wind or with it. Therole was likened to a sailor’s set of skills: to promote security and well-being of the crew, to help crew navigate theirmoral reflections, to sail a course into the wind against homogeneity, to accommodate the crew’s needs and just sail withthe wind, and to steer towards a harbour with authority and expertise. Balancing the disparate roles of being accom-modative and challenging may create a free space for emotions and ideas, including self-reflection and consideration ofmoral demands. This research opens the question of whether all these skills can be taught through systematic training orwhether facilitators need to possess the characteristics of being therapeutic, pedagogical, provocative, sensitive andauthoritarian.

This study describes which clinical ethics approaches are available to support healthcare personnel in clinical practice in terms of their construction, functions and goals. Healthcare personnel frequently face ethically difficult situations in the course of their work and these issues cover a wide range of areas from prenatal care to end-of-life care. Although various forms of clinical ethics support have been developed, to our knowledge there is a lack of review studies describing which ethics support approaches are available, how they are constructed and their goals in supporting healthcare personnel in clinical practice. This study engages in an integrative literature review. We searched for peer-reviewed academic articles written in English between 2000 and 2016 using specific Mesh terms and manual keywords in CINAHL, MEDLINE and Psych INFO databases. In total, 54 articles worldwide described clinical ethics support approaches that include clinical ethics consultation, clinical ethics committees, moral case deliberation, ethics rounds, ethics discussion groups, and ethics reflection groups. Clinical ethics consultation and clinical ethics committees have various roles and functions in different coun-tries. They can provide healthcare personnel with advice and recommendations regarding the best course of action. Moral case deliberation, ethics rounds, ethics discussion groups and ethics reflection groups support the idea that group reflection increases insight into ethical issues. Clinical ethics support in the form of a ‘‘bot-tom-up’’ perspective might give healthcare personnel opportunities to think and reflect more than a ‘‘top-down’’ perspective. A ‘‘bottom-up’’ approach leaves the healthcare personnel with the moral responsibility for their choice of action in clinical practice, while a ‘‘top-down’’ approach risks removing such moral responsibility.