We recommend that you always use the latest version of your browser.
Ethics
The health trusts in Helse Sør-Øst depend on trust and a positive reputation in order to provide good healthcare services. Ethical quality in the provision of services and administration is a prerequisite for this trust.
To ensure that employees are aware of this, Helse Sør-Øst has guidelines for various professional areas. These guidelines are generally broad in nature. This requires reflection on the part of each employee.
Guidelines, regulations and cooperation agreements are based on universally applicable ethical values and norms, such as fairness, loyalty, honesty, reliability, truthfulness, and treating others as you would like to be treated yourself. They are founded on Helse Sør-Øst’s vision and values.
In addition to managing society’s resources, the health service is responsible for upholding the fundamental ethics and morality of the welfare state. Helse Sør-Øst will operate on the basis of its values.
Many laws and regulations affect the ethical values and norms in our operations. All employees must comply with the laws, regulations and guidelines in force at any given time, regardless of department, position or role. Each employee also has a duty to be familiar with, learn about and comply with the laws that may affect their individual work responsibilities.
Laws, instructions and rules alone can never ensure a high ethical standard. Employees must set the standard themselves by focusing on the ethical aspects of their actions. This means that each person must continuously and critically assess their own interests and involvement in ethical conflicts.
All employees in the Helse Sør-Øst health region, and everyone acting on behalf of Helse Sør-Øst, must act in accordance with generally accepted ethical standards and applicable legislation. Helse Sør-Øst’s ethical guidelines clarify these general ethical principles. Guidelines concerning the health trusts’ dealings with gifts, foundations and endowments are intended to help ensure that the trust fulfils its duty of care and duty to investigate under the regulations and in its role as a public service provider.
Helse Sør-Øst will promote both environmental requirements and ethical trade. This is set out in ethical guidelines for procurement and supplier relations, adopted by the board on 10 December 2009 and implemented across the trust group in spring 2010. Helse Sør-Øst wishes to use its purchasing power to strengthen efforts to establish sound environmental requirements and requirements for ethical supply chains in public procurement.
All employees in the Helse Sør-Øst health region, and everyone acting on behalf of Helse Sør-Øst, must act in accordance with good business practice, applicable legislation and generally accepted ethical standards. This is to help increase value creation in society by ensuring the most efficient possible use of resources in public procurement. The guidelines are intended to help ensure that the public has confidence that public procurement is carried out in a way that benefits society. These ethical guidelines concern Helse Sør-Øst’s relations with suppliers and its responsibility as a major purchaser of goods and services.
The regional health authorities have entered into cooperation agreements with the Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry in Norway (LMI) and Suppliers to the Health Services in Norway (LFH). The agreements ensure that cooperation is conducted in a professionally and ethically appropriate manner.