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Are Ethics Committee Members Competent to Consult?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Diane Hoffmann ,
Anita Tarzian  and
J. Anne O'Neil
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Extract

A significant amount of discussion in the bioethics community has been devoted to the question of whether individuals performing ethics consultations in healthcare institutions have any special expertise. In addition, articles in the lay press have questioned the “added value” that bioethicists bring to ethical dilemmas. Those at the forefront of the bioethics community have argued repeatedly that those doing ethics consults cannot simply be well-intentioned individuals, that some training in bioethics, group process, and facilitation is necessary to competently execute a consult. As one bioethicist commented:

if you approach any endeavor as an amateur activity, you will get, in the end, an amateurish version of the activity. Without a sufficient commitment of personnel, time, support, and financial resources, a healthcare organization will get the ‘ethics’ program … it set out to create: an inept, unskilled, inefficient, and highly risky ‘program’ in healthcare ethics and bioethics.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , Spring 2000 , pp. 30 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2000

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References

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A correction has been issued for this article:

Erratum