RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 A report on small team clinical ethics consultation programmes in Japan JF Journal of Medical Ethics JO J Med Ethics FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Institute of Medical Ethics SP 858 OP 862 DO 10.1136/jme.2008.024307 VO 34 IS 12 A1 M Fukuyama A1 A Asai A1 K Itai A1 S Bito YR 2008 UL http://jme.bmj.com/content/34/12/858.abstract AB Clinical ethics support, including ethics consultation, has become established in the field of medical practice throughout the world. This practice has been regarded as useful, most notably in the UK and the USA, in solving ethical problems encountered by both medical practitioners and those who receive medical treatment. In Japan, however, few services are available to respond to everyday clinical ethical issues, although a variety of difficult ethical problems arise daily in the medical field: termination of life support, euthanasia and questions about patient autonomy.In light of these conditions, a group of 17 volunteer educators and researchers from the area of biomedical ethics, including the authors, have formed the Clinical Ethics Support and Education Project, and began providing Japan’s first small team clinical ethics consultation service in October, 2006. Members include scholars of biomedical ethics, scholars of philosophy and ethics, legal professionals and legal scholars, nurses and doctors, consisting of five women and 12 men. Consultation teams, made up of a small number of members, were organised each time a request for consultation was received.Over approximately 15 months (October 2006–December 2007), the programme received 22 consultation requests from medical practitioners and medical institutions, and three from the families of patients. In this paper, we will discuss the status of our consultation service and examples of consultation cases we have handled. In addition, we will examine the process of evaluating small team clinical ethics consultation services, as well as the strengths and weakness of such programmes.