Services for Hospitals

Clinical Consultation Services can provide your medical, nursing, social work and allied staff with educational programs on informed consent, promoting relationships with surrogate decision-makers and the withholding/withdrawing of life-sustaining treatment (not all inclusive). Programs on end-of-life decision-making are also available to your surrounding community as required by the Patient Self-Determination Act. In addition, services such as ethics committee training, policy review and clinical ethics consultations can be provided to your hospital.

For hospitals that do not have an ethics committee, CCS's ethics consultant will guide the formation of a new committee. Once established, the committee members will be provided with a series of seminars that will provide them with an understanding of the key issues, theories and principles of medical ethics. As a result they will be prepared to recognize, discuss and facilitate the resolution of ethics issues that arise in your hospital.

For hospitals that do have an ethics committee, their committee members will be provided with a series of continuing education seminars on transplantation, managed care, patient deception, chemical and physical restraints, organizational ethics and resource allocation (not all-inclusive).

In preparation for a survey by The Joint Commission (JCAHO), your hospital's policies & procedures can be audited in order to determine compliance with JCAHO's 34 "Patient Rights and Organizational Ethics" standards. These standards cover, for example, organ donation, advance directives, research ethics, confidentiality, conflict resolution, dignity and a patient's right to refuse care.

A clinical ethics consultation can be provided in situations where there is a conflict or concern as to what constitutes good patient care in a particular situation. During a consultation the ethics consultant's goals can be to:

1. Help the patient and/or their family work through the decision-making process in order to determine what the treatment option, discharge plan or long-term goal ought to be.

2. Help the staff come to a consensus as to what care plan would both promote the patient's interests and the staff's sense of professional ethics.

3. Resolve a conflict that has arisen between a patient, their family and the healthcare team, or some combination thereof.