The Rules Governing How Ethics Committees Work

The laws often time reflects the minimum requirement of ethics and are enforced by state and federal authorities. However, it is important to realize that law does not equal to ethics. Against common belief, it is possible to take unethical but legal actions under various circumstances. For instances, abortion is legal in some states, but it may not be considered ethical depending on the situation and the person and party perceiving it. People make ethical decisions based on the law, morality, values and their code of ethics in their professional field.

Ethical committees were established to support and advise patients, families, as well as caregivers as they work together to find solutions for different circumstances involve ethical decisions (Pope, 2009). The committees are typically multidisciplinary groups comprised of representative from different departments of the healthcare facility-medicine, nursing, law, pastoral care, and social work, etc. Rosalind Ekman Ladd (2009) from Brown University considered the most sexiest part of ethics committees is case consultation, where ethics committees help solve conflicts between health care workers, or between health care workers and patients around health care related issues.

Ethics committees in the health care field are usually being perceived as groups that provide advisory and facilitation for the organization, care giver and the patients. When in reality, ethics committees are often largely involved in the final decision making. In most cases, ethics committees are given authority and responsibility by law to make treatment decisions when conflicts arise between parties involved in the treatment (Pope, 2009).

Ethics committees are still under a lot of debates for their decision making processes, from the risks of corruption, bias, to carelessness and arbitrariness (Pope, 2009). However, the intensions of ethics committees are un-doubly good willed. Ethics committees need to undergo continues process improvement because of all the issues encountered, and also the value and believe of ethics change with the value and believe of the society. Ethics committee is designed to increase understanding among all the involved parties, and to help resolve difficult ethical, legal and medical dilemmas faced by care givers of the critically and terminally ill patients.

Resource

Ladd, R. (2009). Roles and responsibilities of ethics committees. The American Journal Of

Bioethics: AJOB, 9(4), 41-42. doi:10.1080/15265160802716837

Pope, T. M. (2009). Multi-institutional Healthcare Ethics Committees: The Procedurally Fair

Internal Dispute Resolution Mechanism. Campbell University. Retrieved from http://law.campbell.edu/lawreview/articles/31-2-257.pdf