The 7 stage model for facilitating moral case deliberation in health-care institutions:A practical illustration of a meta-model

During a moral case deliberation-session, health care professionals come together in order to reflect on a moral issue they have to deal with. Since the whole process of sorting facts out, identifying moral issues, formulating and weighing arguments et cetera, can be quite complex, there should always be a well-trained facilitator present, who safeguards the flow of the session. In order to train and to assess the quality of these facilitators, we developed the so-called 7 stage model of moral case deliberation. This model is a meta-model, describing all the stages and all the activities that take place during each mcd-session--regardless of variables like the type of case that is being discussed, the number of participants, or the reflection method that is being applied. These 7 stages are: introduction, case selection, method selection, factual exploration, analysis, conclusion and rounding off. The model makes it possible to describe all the tasks facilitators at least have to perform in order to steer their group through theses stages in a fruitful and efficient way. It also makes it possible to identify the minimum generic competencies each facilitator should master, in order to perform these tasks successfully. In this paper, we introduce the model (to our knowledge, the first of its kind), discuss some of the most important theoretical backgrounds, provide a theoretical justification, and above all, give a practical illustration of how the model can be applied when facilitating an mcd-session.