Year: 1991
Type: article
Abstract: The term "institutional ethics committee" describes a multidisciplinary committee of health care professionals and community representatives established to address the ethical dilemmas that occur within the health care institution.Most often these committees deal with issues regarding the withholding or withdrawal of life sustaining treatment from patients who lack decisionmaking capacities.See Cranford & Doudera, The Emergence of Ethics Committees, in INSTITUTIONAL ETHICS COMMITTEES AND HEALTH CARE DECISION MAKING 6-7 (R. Cranford & A. Doudera eds.1984) [hereinafter INSTITUTIONAL ETHICS COMMITTEES].At the present time, the use of these committees by patients, family members or health care providers is purely optional and the role of the committees is solely advisory.2. Fleetwood, Arnold & Baron, Giving Answers or Raising Questions?: The Problematic Role of Institutional Ethics Committees, 15 J. MED.ETHICS 137 (1989).3. Several studies have been conducted during the last decade to determine the number of hospitals that have established ethics committees, and incidentally showing the progression of their development.In a 1982 survey conducted by the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Dr. Stuart Youngner found only 17 committees in the 400 hospitals with more than 200 beds that he surveyed, and no committees in the 202 hospitals he studied with less than 200 beds.Based on these observations he estimated that approximately 1%6 of hospitals had ethics committees in place.Cranford & Doudera, supra note 1, at 9 (citing Youngner, A National Survey of Ethics Committees, in PRESIDENT'S COMMISSION FOR
Source: PubMed
Author: Diane Hoffman
Language: English
Topic: Ethics in medical practice
Subfield: General Health Professions
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1499500776