Handbook For Hospital Ethics Committees

How can dedicated health care ethics committees increase their effectiveness and demonstrate their value as essential moral resources for their organizations? Among the most effective and increasingly valued resources in the health care decision-making process is the institutional ethics committee. The Joint Commission (TJC) accredits and certifies more than 19,000 health care organizations in the United States, including hospitals, nursing homes, and home care agencies. As a condition of accreditation, TJC requires health care organizations to have available a standing multidisciplinary ethics committee, composed of physicians, nurses, attorneys, ethicists, administrators, and interested lay citizens. Many of these committees are well meaning but may lack the information, experience, skills, and formal background in bioethics needed to effectively address the range and complexity of the ethical issues that arise in clinical and organizational settings. Handbook for Health Care Ethics Committees was conceived in 2007 to address the myriad responsibilities assumed by ethics committees. Using sample cases and accessible language, Linda Farber Post and Jeffrey Blustein explored applied bioethics, including informed consent and refusal, decision making and decisional capacity, truth telling, care at the beginning and end of life, palliation, justice in and access to health care services, and organizational ethics. In the third edition, Post and Blustein have thoroughly updated and reorganized the content and expanded the scope of the material, with special attention to changes in the health care landscape since the second edition was published in 2015. They also focus on communication between and among patients, care providers, and families, the demands of professionalism, the essential role that ethics committees can and should play, and how their effectiveness and value can be assessed. An entirely new chapter examines research ethics. The book also addresses the challenging ethical issues raised by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This guide remains an essential resource for all health care ethics committee and their members.

Approximately 85% of hospitals now have ethics committees. But this statistic says little about the efficiency and importance of these committees in their institutions. Frequently, ethics committees exist more in name than in practice, and are left without the guidance and help of their institution. Health Care Ethics Committees provides a plethora of advice, including possible projects and activities, suggestions for making meetings more effective, insights into policy-making, and models for mission statements and goals. In addition, this book gives leaders a panoramic view of the past, present, and future of ethics committees in health care.

This is a book about clinical ethics consultation by two practitioners who together have done more than 700 consultations. There is not another authoritative book like it. Practical rather than theoretical in scope, the book addresses strategies for conducting consultations, relating to patients at the bedside, investigating the ethical issues, making recommendations, following up on cases, and keeping records. Chapters include issues such as the need for training, the skills needed, the problem of certification, how to set up a practice, financial compensation and billing, and the relation of the consultant to committees, particularly ethics committees. The authors include reflections about learning clinical ethics and education of committees, hospital staff, and the general public about issues that arise. The purpose is to help ethics consultants improve their conscious assessment of their work, both how they go about it and its legitimacy for patients, health care providers, and hospitals. The orientation is primarily on clinical care of patients, because the goal of such consultations is always aimed to improve patient care. Other ethics consultants might work to develop institutional policies. Although that is touched on in the book, it is not the primary goal of the authors. The book is aimed at the practitioner in bioethics in a clinical setting.

Healthcare ethics help guide and influence the way physicians, nurses, and other members of the healthcare team care for patients and make decisions. Ethics address the moral dilemmas that arise out of conflicts with duties or obligations as well as the consequences of decision-making. As healthcare has continued to grow and evolve, so has the way healthcare ethics are handled. Nurses are uniquely positioned to serve as leaders in healthcare ethics because they are intricately involved in all aspects of patient care, including care coordination, recommendations for plans of care, provision of life-sustaining interventions, and patient education. The Nurse’s Healthcare Ethics Committee Handbook focuses on a nurse-led ethics consultative service. Authors Angeline Dewey and Andrea Holecek provide tools that nursing students, professionals, administrators, and other members of the healthcare team need to develop infrastructure and processes that support nurses in an ethics committee leadership role. Filled with real-life scenarios, this book outlines a step-by-step process for nurses to evaluate ethical cases and the risks involved

Definitive and comprehensive guidance for members of healthcare ethics committees confronted with ethically challenging situations.