Interventions to promote an ethical climate: a scoping review

Abstract

This review aims to identify and describe interventions to promote an ethical climate in health institutions. Method: a scope review carried out on PubMed, Virtual Health Library, EBSCOhost, and Google Scholar from October to December 2022. Data were analyzed using numerical and thematic synthesis and included two quasi-experimental and one experimental studies. Physicians, nurses, and other team members participated in this review, which describes the carried out interventions and obtained results. The interventions included workshops, ethics rounds, and an early action protocol that lasted from two weeks to six months. This review found a difference in the ethical climate for all participants in one study, only for nurses in another study, and no significant differences in the last studies. Few studies implement and evaluate interventions to promote an ethical climate. More studies are needed to improve content, didactics, and assessment methods in different contexts with several professionals.