Education for collaborative ethical decision making skills in intensive care clinicians

Intensive Care is a high-burnout specialty, with exposure to traumatic events, end of life care, and moral distress being major factors that drive this. A healthy workplace culture is protective for clinicians, and poor workplace culture is known to impact negatively on patient care and on staff wellbeing. A survey in 2016 revealed that poor workplace culture is a significant problem in intensive care units in Australia and New Zealand. In response to this, the College of Intensive Care Medicine launched a Culture Project that has an overarching goal to improve the culture in intensive care units. It aims to develop a model of culture and to generate evidence to inform a variety of interventions. I make a case that ethics is the 'engine' of culture and hypothesise that educating intensive care clinicians in collaborative ethical decision making is a meaningful strategy to effect change in workplace culture. My research will be part conceptual and part empirical. I will complete conceptual work that defines the virtues, attitudes, and mindsets that should be fostered in the training of intensive care clinicians. This conceptual work will then be further developed through a modified Philosophical Delphi method and used to inform the development of the final education package. The educational package will then be piloted on two multidisciplinary groups with pre- and post testing of the course outcomes. The aim is to develop a comprehensive education package, including a Handbook of Collaborative Ethical Decision Making.