[Ethical problems of the emergency room work].

We studied the incidence of ethical problems occurring in the emergency room of a large Danish provincial hospital. During a period of two months, 3620 unselected patients were treated, and in 190 (5.2%) of these cases the attending physician identified one or more ethical problems. The three most common problems identified were a. potentially suboptimal treatment due to communication difficulties, b. potentially suboptimal treatment due to a high work-load in the emergency room, and c. questions raised by patients who presented with minimal lesions not requiring any treatment. It is suggested that a reduction of the number of ethical problems encountered in the emergency room can be obtained by allocation of more resources, education of the staff, and education of the general public explaining the role of the emergency room.