Ethics Newsline®

Some hospitals are reviewing composition of ethics committees, which mediate agonizing end-of-life decisions

NEW YORK
While hospital medical-ethics teams increasingly are called on to help resolve agonizing end-of-life decisions, such as mediating among family members who disagree about removing a patient from life support, there is escalating concern about the qualifications of committee members, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

Journal reporter Laura Landro writes: “The complex ethical issues arising from new life-prolonging medical technologies are throwing up new challenges. And hospitals face potential legal liability if patients and families feel they haven’t been properly counseled or provided with all the information they need to make decisions.”

Landro reports that several hospitals have “taken note of deficiencies in their bioethics consulting and are taking steps to fix them.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs, she writes, is asking the 153 hospitals in its system to evaluate ethics consultants for competency and provide mandatory training for consultants.

But there are critics of mandatory bioethics training and credentialing, some of whom argue that health care personnel gain adequate on-the-job training from handling ethical issues over years of practice, according to the Journal.

Source: Wall Street Journal, June 27.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 16 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 28 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 14 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 7.