As everybody knows, advances in medicine and medical technology have brought enormous benefits to, and created vexing choices for, us all – choices that can, and occasionally do, test the very limits of thinking itself. As everyone also knows, we live in the age of consultants, i.e., of professional experts who are ready, willing, and able to give us advice on any and every conceivable question. One such consultant is the medical ethics consultant, or the medical ethicist who consults.Medical ethics (...) consultants involve themselves in just about every aspect of health care decision making. They help legislators and judges determine law, hospitals formulate policies, medical schools develop curricula, etc. In addition to educating physicians, nurses, and lawyers, amongst others, including medical, nursing, and law students, they participate in clinical decision making at the bedside. (shrink)

As everybody knows, advances in medicine and medical technology have brought enormous benefits to, and created vexing choices for, us all – choices that can, and occasionally do, test the very limits of thinking itself. As everyone also knows, we live in the age of consultants, i.e., of professional experts who are ready, willing, and able to give us advice on any and every conceivable question. One such consultant is the medical ethics consultant, or the medical ethicist who consults.Medical ethics (...) consultants involve themselves in just about every aspect of health care decision making. They help legislators and judges determine law, hospitals formulate policies, medical schools develop curricula, etc. In addition to educating physicians, nurses, and lawyers, amongst others, including medical, nursing, and law students, they participate in clinical decision making at the bedside. (shrink)

This paper describes the first three-year experience of the Consortium Ethics Program (CEP-1) of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Medical Ethics, and also outlines plans for the second three-year phase (CEP-2) of this experiment in continuing ethics education. In existence since 1990, the CEP has the primary goal of creating a cost-effective, permanent ethics resource network, by utilizing the educational resources of a university bioethics center and the practical expertise of a regional hospital council. The CEP's conception and specific (...) components stem from recognition of the need to make each hospital a major focus of educational efforts, and to provide academic support for the in-house activities of the representatives from each institution. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe a collaborative project involving two feminist trained scientists1 in consultation with a bioethicist, a policy analyst, and a research scientist funded by the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative for the design and implementation of a training program for ethics in synthetic biology. In spring 2011, the project culminated in our coteaching an experimental graduate seminar on ethics and synthetic biology.Synthetic biology most commonly refers to an interdisciplinary field that aims to merge engineering and biology methods (...) to create new technologies. The promise is that these new technologies will solve the world’s most pressing problems: for example, they may provide us with cures.. (shrink)

In June 1992, a national mail survey was directed to 204 state inpatient psychiatric institutions. This study was implemented following the 1992 Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) requirement that hospitals put in place some means with which to address ethical issues. The goals of the study were: 1. to examine state mental hospital characteristics and their response to the JCAHO requirements; 2. to describe healthcare ethics committee (HEC) composition, function, and role; 3. to study patient and family (...) access to a HEC; and 4. to discover ethical issues most frequently addressed. The survey response rate was 71%. Of the 145 responders, 62 had HECs in place, and 53 were in the process of implementing HECs. There were no differences between JCAHO accredited institutions and non-accredited facilities with regard to having HECs. Physicians accounted for 22% of HEC membership, followed by nurses (15%), and administrators (12%). Twenty-six percent of facilities systematically notified patients about existence of the HEC; 71% of facilities had no patient request for HEC services in the last year. A patient's danger to others, and resuscitation policy were issues most frequently (23%) heard by HECs. (shrink)

Ethics education is an emerging concept at the intersection of ethics and education, and this article aims to define the goals of ethics education in order to specify the general structure of teaching ethics in healthcare. Additionally, providing the opportunity to map the next stages of ethics education, such as what to teach and how to teach, is another purpose of the suggested normative framework. Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental approach, Handelsman et al.’s ethical acculturation model, and the Delors Report’s learning throughout life (...) concept are utilized to determine the notion of teaching ethics and its objectives. Through the integration of these three approaches and the adaptation of the Delors Report’s pillars, the goals of ethics education are described as: increasing ethical knowledge; improving ethical skills to strengthen ethical sensitivity, awareness, and judgement; developing ethical behavior; and promoting cultural competence. These goals indicate that ethics education is an ongoing process transcending to teach or learn certain ethical codes, norms, and principles. Exploring and recognizing individuals’ abilities, personal values, and cultural backgrounds are also essential requirements of teaching ethics. Furthermore, this perspective demands administrating existing ethical challenges, differences, and conflicts in healthcare through augmenting cultural competence rather than imposing and/or assimilating policies. (shrink)