Due to the complexity, stressfulness
and often the life threatening nature
of tasks that ambulance professionals
have to deal with every day, ethical
decision making in Emergency
Services is a daily challenge. An
Australian Association of Ambulance
Professionals undertook a project of
research to identify the individual
ethics profile of members and their
perspective on organization ethics
and ethical conflict to better understand
apparent conflict in ethical
values between members and their
employer organization. Due to the
exploratory nature of this study
two types of data (quantitative and
qualitative) were gathered through
a self-administrated questionnaire
of members and semi-structured
interviews. Results indicate a gap
between individual ethical decisionmaking
approaches and organizational
ethical decision-making in
EMS. This has implications for EMS
in how it maintains it organizational
processes yet retains its professional
staff. Further, managing the stress
and conflict levels of staff may be
important in order to ensure current
standards of care are maintained.