Organ donation and transplantation have made it possible to both save life and to improve the quality of life for a large number of patients. In the last years there has been an increasing gap between the number of patients who need organs and organs available for transplantation, and the focus worldwide has been on how to meet the organ shortage. This also rises some ethical challenges.

The objective of this study was to explore healthcare professionals’ experience of ethics related to care and interaction with critically ill patients with severe brain injuries and their families.

A hermeneutic phenomenological approach was used to explore the participants’ experiences. Methods for collecting data were a combination of participant observations and in-depth interviews.

Two ICUs in a Norwegian university hospital were recruited for data collection. A total of 12 cases were observed, and 32 of the healthcare professionals involved were interviewed.

The study was approved by the Regional Committee for Research Ethics. Permission to the study in the ICUs was obtained from the Chief Physician in the two ICUs respectively. The right of the participants was ensured by written, voluntary, and informed consent.

From the thematic analysis, a structure of the participants’ experiences emerged as a process. While the patients’ condition was clarified through phases of prognostic ambiguity, gradual clarification and prognostic certainty, interaction with the families was characterized by ambiguity that involved withholding. The prognostic process had a great impact on how the healthcare professionals interacted with the family. The interaction challenged the participants’ caring values in various ways and captured an important structure in their experiences of the ethical interaction with the patients’ families. These challenges distinguish caring for families in donation situations from caring for relatives of critically ill patients in general.

In the discussion we have illuminated how professional ethics may be threatened by more pragmatic and utilitarian arguments contained in regulations and transplant act.

Ethical questions should be discussed more both in educations of healthcare professionals and in clinical practice.