A scenario – based assessment of the perceptions towards medical mediation in healthcare professionals: insights from a cross-sectional survey

Medical mediation is a collaborative tool for resolving ethically complex disputes in healthcare. Though widely recognized in international clinical ethics it has only been recently introduced in Greece. The objective of this work was to assess healthcare professionals’ perceptions of medical mediation using a scenario-based survey, A structured, cross-sectional online questionnaire was completed by 431 healthcare professionals across Greece. The survey included three clinical vignettes on (1) end-of-life care, (2) religious refusal of treatment, and (3) medical error disclosure), Likert-scale items on attitudes toward mediation, and demographic information. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to identify patterns of response across the scenarios and attitudinal items. Participants expressed strong support for mediation across all scenarios (median scores ≥ 9), with the highest support for medical error disclosure. LCA revealed three distinct respondent profiles: strongly supportive (73.3%), moderately supportive (14.6%), and cautiously positive (12.1%). Significant trends were observed across profiles for the perceived effectiveness of mediation and support for institutional training (p < 0.01). However, formal training and familiarity with mediation among the participants were low (< 5%). Despite limited training and formal implementation, Greek healthcare professionals show high support for medical mediation. The demand and need for structured mediation training and integration into the Greek healthcare system is strong.