New guidelines for British ethics committees.

New Challenges for Ethics Committees

Dr. Mitchell is chairperson, Department of Biomedical Ethics, School of Graduate Medical Education, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ. He is also director, Institute for Ethics, a division of the Catholic HealthCare Partnership of New Jersey. I n 1999 the Institute for Ethics, a division of the Catholic HealthCare Partnership of New Jersey, launched a program to assist institutional ethic...

Ethics committees and ethics consultants

Ethics committee and ethics consultants are among the more interesting phenomena associated with bioethics. Although in some respects both reach back to the ancient origins of medical ethics, in other ways they are reflections of a ‘postmodern’ society that seeks moral resolutions while remaining agnostic about substantive moral absolutes. In the present article I shall describe the history of ...

Developing clinical ethics committees.

Formal clinical ethics review first developed in the USA and most hospitals there have structures in place. This is often a clinical ethics committee. Developments have been slower in the UK, where there has been uncertainty and variability about the role of clinical ethics committees. Even in the USA, their exact role is uncertain. Although we now have a good idea of the mechanisms for ethical...

Ethical ethics committees?

Core competencies for clinical ethics committees.

Clinical ethics committees (CECs) are increasing in number in the UK and have mostly developed in response to local interest, as opposed to being mandated as in the USA. However, there is no regulatory framework for UK CECs with no defined educational requirements or specification of core competencies for their members. The UK Clinical Ethics Network has consulted extensively with its members t...