Martine Kruijtbosch

142 Chap t e r 4 ABSTRACT Introduction: Community pharmacists are regularly confronted with moral dilemmas. These may cause moral distress and subsequently may negatively affect the quality of patient care. Moral case deliberation (MCD) is increasingly being used as a method to support medical health professionals to deal with their moral dilemmas by systematic and joint moral reflection. MCD has only been implemented in multidisciplinary groups of secondary care professionals and is unavailable for community pharmacists. Objective: To explore whether MCD fosters the moral reflectivity required for community pharmacists to make ethical decisions in moral dilemma cases. Method: A descriptive explorative study of two MCD sessions using videoconferencing with 14 community pharmacists (seven pharmacists per session) and two facilitators was performed. Both sessions were structured using the dilemma method and recorded. All transcribed quotes were deductively coded with the profession’s core values as formulated by the Royal Dutch Pharmacists Association to qualitatively analyse on the basis of which of these values the pharmacists deliberated during the sessions. A questionnaire was used to evaluate the participants’ experiences with the sessions afterwards. Results: All profession’s core values played a role in the participants’ reflections during the image-formation, judgement-formation and decision-making phases of the MCD sessions. The participants reported the MCD sessions as useful and felt supported in all the relevant phases of ethical decision-making. Conclusion: MCD has potential to foster community pharmacists’ moral reflectivity in the context of professionally resolving moral dilemmas. Participants became more aware of their professional values and the role those values play in substantiating their ethical decision- making.