Risk management during times of health uncertainty in Spain: a qualitative analysis of ethical challenges
Author
Morales, Isabel
Publication date
2024ISSN
0272-4332
Abstract
The study examines the reflections of various experts in risk management when asked about uncertainty generated by a health threat and the response to such a threat: what criteria should guide action when potential harm is anticipated, but not known with certainty? The objective of the research is to obtain a holistic perspective of ethical conflicts in risk management, based on experts' accounts within the Spanish territory. A qualitative study was conducted through semi-structured interviews with 27 experts from various fields related to health risk management and its ethical implications, following the grounded theory method. The method includes theory generation through an inductive approach, based on the identified categories. The 27 narratives obtained revealed a variety of fundamental issues grouped into 8 subcategories and subsequently grouped into three main categories. The first category focuses on human vulnerability in health matters. The second category explores the agents and instruments for decision-making that arise from uncertain or traumatic social events. The third category refers to the need for common ethical paradigms for all humanity that implement justice over universal values. A main theory was suggested on the concept of responsibility in a global common good. There is an urgent need to assume this integrative responsibility as an inherent strategy in decision-making. To achieve this, the involved actors must acquire specific humanistic training, conceptualizing fundamental ethical principles, and emphasizing skills more related to humanistic virtues than technical knowledge.
Document Type
Article
Document version
Published version
Language
English
Subject (CDU)
00 - Prolegomena. Fundamentals of knowledge and culture. Propaedeutics
61 - Medical sciences
Keywords
Bé comú global
Teoria fonamentada
Incertesa de la salut
Habilitats humanístiques
Gestió de riscos
Bien común mundial
Teoría fundamentada
Incertidumbre sanitaria
Habilidades humanísticas
Gestión de riesgos
Global common good
Grounded theory
Health uncertainty
Humanistic skills
Risk management
Pages
12
Publisher
Wiley
Is part of
Risk Analysis
Citation
Macpherson, Ignacio; Guardia, Juan; Morales, Isabel [et al.]. Risk management during times of health uncertainty in Spain: a qualitative analysis of ethical challenges. Risk Analysis, 2024, p. 1-12. Disponible en: <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/risa.17638>. Fecha de acceso: 4 sep. 2024. DOI: 10.1111/risa.17638
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Humanitats [134]
Rights
© 2024 The Author(s). Risk Analysis published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Risk Analysis. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/