The 4C model: A reflective tool for the analysis of ethical cases at the neonatal intensive-care unit

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Doctors and nurses at the neonatal intensive-care unit at The University Hospital, Rigshospitalet, in Copenhagen, Denmark regularly find themselves in ethically challenging and potentially distressing situations concerning the life of ill newborn babies. In collaboration with the neonatal intensive-care unit, my project was to develop a method that could stimulate systematically dialogical moral inquiry within everyday clinical practice. My four months of ethnographic fieldwork at the neonatal intensive-care unit generated four fundamental themes that make up the scaffold of the developed model for ethical deliberation and decision making. The model is a reflective tool to be used by health care professionals in situ. It provides a structured and a systematic framework for dialogue that can clarify the obscurities of a case and give argumentative support for ethical decisions. This article explains how the 4C model was developed and whereof it consists.
Original languageEnglish
JournalClinical Ethics
Volume9
Issue number4
Pages (from-to)120-126
Number of pages7
ISSN1477-7509
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2014

ID: 134954803