Ethics Committees

On this page you will find resources for healthcare provider ethics committees:

• 2004 Survey of Anabaptist Organizations on the use of Ethics Committees

  Click here for the Executive Summary

  Click here to see the full survey results

   

• Ethics Policies from Anabaptist-related Providers

 

Advance Directives:

Advance Directives. from Greencroft Retirement Communities (PDF). Purpose: To ensure that Greencroft residents’ wishes regarding medical care will be honored to the greatest extent possible, even when the residents are no longer able to express their wishes.

 

Autonomy/Decision-Making Capacity:

Decision-Making Capacity, from Greencroft Retirement Communities, January 2004 (PDF). Purpose: To prescribe conduct which recognizes and respects the individual autonomy of residents in a continuing care retirement community and which, at the same time, anticipates the need of the community to respond appropriately when the decision-making capacity of the individual resident becomes compromised or impaired.

Determination of Capacity, from Greencroft Retirement Communities, January 2004 (PDF). Purpose: To establish a procedure and protocol for determining (1) whether a health care resident has the capacity to make health care decisions and (2) when Greencroft may rely upon health care decisions made by the resident’s surrogate.

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Cohabitation:

Policy and Procedures Concerning Intimate Expression (Policy on Sexual Expression), Tel Hai, The Meadows Health Care Center.

In September 2005, ACHE conducted an informal survey of MHS-Alliance providers regarding policies and procedures for “cohabitation.” (The term “cohabitation” was intentionally left undefined.) Click here to see the original cohabitation inquiry letter from ACHE.. A sample of responses from MHS-Alliance providers can be found here (provider names and most other identifying details have been removed). As you will see, there is little consistency in how MHS-Alliance providers deal with these questions. Since cohabitation is itself an important concern, and because it likely exemplifies future issues where our faith-based convictions are at odds with cultural (and/or legislative) norms, ACHE will look for an opportunity to bring providers together to discuss issues surrounding cohabitation.

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Continuum of Care:

Continuum of Care, from Greencroft Retirement Communities, June 2000 (PDF). Purpose: To provide guidelines that are responsive to the changing needs of residents, their families and community, as they move through the continuum of care.

 

End-of-Life:

Care for Dying Residents/End of Life Care, from Greencroft Retirement Communities, June 1998 (PDF). Purpose: To assure that Greencroft residents will receive the best possible care as they approach the end of their lives. The Greencroft staff is committed to do all it can to enable dying residents to experience relief of pain, a sense of dignity, the presence of their loved ones, attention to their overall suffering, and the opportunity for spiritual fulfillment and peace.

Hospice Benefit, from Greencroft Retirement Communities, June 1998 (PDF). Purpose: To assure Greencroft residents will receive the best end-of-life care offered by community and health care resources.

Living Will, from Greencroft Retirement Communities, June 1996 (PDF). Purpose: To clarify facility policy on rights of residents as they relate to a living will.

Nutrition Therapy in Comfort Care, from Greencroft Retirement Communities, November 1999 (PDF). Purpose: To assure that residents receive nutrition appropriate to their diagnosis and condition as they approach the end of their lives.

Physician Assisted Death, from Greencroft Retirement Communities, November 1999 (PDF). Purpose: In the event that the State of Indiana should legalize the practice of physician-assisted suicide, this policy will make clear the position of Greencroft toward this practice.

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Ethics Committees:

Ethics Committee Charter, from Greencroft Retirement Communities, September 2004 (PDF).

Accessing the Ethics Committee, from Greencroft Retirement Communities, April 1999 (PDF). Purpose: To assure staff, residents, and families access to Ethics Committee.

Corporate Compliance Committee, Brook Lane Health Services, February 2003 (Word Document)

Ethics Committee By-Laws, Tel Hai Retirement Community, May 2004. Purpose Statemen: The purpose of the Tel Hai Retirement Community Ethics Committee is to enable staff and residents to apply appropriate ethical and moral principles in fulfilling Tel Hai’s mission in all facets of its operations, through education, case consultation, policy review and monitoring the institutional conscience. (Word Document)

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Finances:

Benevolent Care, from Greencroft Retirement Communities, February 2004, (PDF). Purpose: Greencroft is a not-for-profit organization sponsored by the Mennonite Church with a mission to serve older adults at various income levels. Greencroft relies on the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program, the Medicaid program, other third party payor programs, and the support of the Greencroft Foundation to provide services and assistance to residents based on their financial resources.

Medicaid Wait List Policy, from Greencroft Retirement Communities, February 2004 (PDF). Purpose: To assure Medicaid beds are appropriately and fairly allocated.

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Other Ethics Policies:

Annual Report of Greencrosft's Retirement Communities' Ethics Committee, July 1, 2003 - June 30, 2004 (PDF)

Pain Management, from Greencroft Retirement Communities, January 2003 (PDF). Purpose: To assure every Greencroft Healthcare resident that Greencroft is committed to the effective relief of pain, and will have in place the means and the educated staff to assess and treat a resident’s pain to the extent humanly possible.

Policy and Procedures Concerning Intimate Expression (Policy on Sexual Expression), Tel Hai, The Meadows Health Care Center

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• Ethics Policies, Non-Anabaptist

National and Local VA Ethics Policies

Respecting Choices, Advance Care Planning Program Quality Improvement Toolkit (PFD) by Bud Hammes and Linda Briggs, Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation 2004.

Withholding or Withdrawing Life-Sustaining Treatment From a Patient Without an Advance Directive, University of Texas Medical Branch, November 2003

University of Virginia DNR Order, Jan. 2001.

University of Virginia, Ethics Consultation, August 1999

University of Virginia, Organ Donation, Nov. 1998

Shepherd Center's Code of Ethical Conduct, 2001, (Word Document).

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• Print Resources on Organizational Ethics

American Medical Association's "Organizational Ethics in Health Care: Toward a Model for Ethical Decision Making by Provider Organizations"

Organizational and Administrative Ethics in Health Care: An Ethics Gap by Mary Cipriano Silva, PhD, RN, FAAN (Dec. 31, 1998), from Online Journal of Issues in Nursing

 

• Print Resources on Ethics Committees

  Ethics Committees in Long-Term Care: A User's Guide to Getting Started (Annals of Long-Term Care 2000;8[1]:35-42) by By Peter Winn, MD, CMD, CAQ(G), and Jacque Cook, MSW, LMFT. The authors describe a stepped approach to assist long-term care (LTC) facilities in the formation of an ethics committee. This guide is based on both the experience of an ethics committee that has been functioning for eight years at a continuum of care facility (independent living, residential care, and nursing home) and a review of the literature.

  International variation in ethics committee requirements: comparisons across five Westernised nations (19 April 2002), from BMC Medical Ethics published by BioMed Central. Ethics committees typically apply the common principles of autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence and justice to research proposals but with variable weighting and interpretation. This paper reports a comparison of ethical requirements in an international cross-cultural study and discusses their implications.

  Clinical ethics revisited, by Peter A Singer, Edmund D Pellegrino, and Mark Siegler (26 April 2001), from BMC Medical Ethics published by BioMed Central. A decade ago, we reviewed the field of clinical ethics; assessed its progress in research, education, and ethics committees and consultation; and made predictions about the future of the field. In this article, we revisit clinical ethics to examine our earlier observations, highlight key developments, and discuss remaining challenges for clinical ethics, including the need to develop a global perspective on clinical ethics problems.

  Clinical ethics revisited: responses, by Solomon R Benatar, Zulfiqar A Bhutta, et al. (26 April 2001). from BMC Medical Ethics published by BioMed Central.

  Discussion Draft of the SHHV-SBC Task Force on Standards for Bioethics Consultation, date uncertain. Click here for a Word Document version.
  

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• Web-based Resources on Ethics Committees
  

  Ethics Committee Core Curriculum: An Orientation Manual for Ethics Committee Members, University of Buffalo Center for Clinical Ethics and Humanities in Health Care, 1997.

  Ethics Committees and Ethics Consultation, Ethics in Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, 1998

  Survival on the Ethics Committee: A Nurse's Guide, by Benjamin Phillips, R.N., Ph.D.. in Community Ethics, The Newsletter of the Consortium Ethics Program Volume 4, Number 1 (Winter 1997)

  Bioethics for Clinicians Series from Canadian Medical Association Journal

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