Research on the development of ethical principles for healthcare management

The aim of the research is to develop ethical principles specific to the management of health institutions. The research was carried out with the Delphi method, which is one of the qualitative research methods. Delphi is a consensus method with consecutive rounds. The purposeful sampling method was used in the study and the expert group consisting of 15 people consisted of academicians with health management education and managers working in public and private health institutions. Based on the research questions, open-ended questions were sent to the experts through online questionnaires in the first part of the study and 200 ethical principle recommendations were received. Using thematic analysis, one of the qualitative analysis methods, 50 items were created for the second stage and sent for the evaluation of experts with a 5-point Likert-type scale. After the second stage, consensus was reached on 49 items, and for 1 principle that could not be agreed upon, the third stage was taken. At the end of the third stage, the study was terminated when a consensus could not be reached for the evaluated principle. For the consensus value, the first quartile, the third quartile, the median and the interquartile range width values were calculated in the second and third stages. As the consensus criterion, it was accepted that the width between the quarters should be less than or equal to 1.2. A consensus was reached on 49 ethical principles under the main themes determined as "Health Institution", "Profession", "Society", "Patients", "Institution Employees" and "Colleagues". It is suggested that the principles developed for the first time in the management of health institutions in Turkey should be discussed and implemented by professional associations, and that they should be subject to research with wider participation.