BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to describe the impact of clinical ethics consultations among patients with head and neck cancer in order to better anticipate and manage clinical challenges. METHODS A database was queried to identify patients with head and neck cancer for whom ethics consultation was performed at a comprehensive cancer center (n = 14). Information from the database w...

ETHICS CONSULTATIONS ARE TOUTED FOR RESOLVING ETHIcal dilemmas, and most hospitals use them to meet the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations’ requirement for a process to resolve conflicts in patient care. Little rigorous evidence is available, however, about the outcomes of ethics consultations. In this issue of THE JOURNAL, Schneiderman and colleagues report a mu...

Professionalism and codes of ethics are intrinsically tied. As professions establish themselves, their members write codes of ethics to help define the professions and who can be a considered a professional. The codes explain why and how professions are deserving of trust, establish standards with specific guidelines for ethical practice, and designate who will have the authority to enforce sta...

This paper discusses the importance of Richard M. Zaner's work on clinical ethics for answering the question: what kind of doing is ethics consultation? The paper argues first, that four common approaches to clinical ethics -- applied ethics, casuistry, principlism, and conflict resolution cannot adequately address the nature of the activity that makes up clinical ethics; second, that understan...

“Bioethics mediation” entered the collective clinical ethics vernacular through a widely read treatise of the same name by Nancy Dubler and Carol Liebman, now in its second edition. In Bioethics Mediation, Dubler and Liebman articulated a new vision for how clinical ethics consultations could be conducted that would offer stakeholders in a bedside conflict a way to craft a shared resolution to ...

Ethics consultation has traditionally focused on the provision of expert guidance to health care professionals when challenging quandaries arise in clinical cases. Its role, however, is expanding as demands on health care organizations are negatively impacting their moral habitability. A sign of this impact can be seen in the moral distress experienced by staff and administrators, such that som...