Clinical ethics support services initially developed in the United States of America, following court cases such as the Karen Ann Quinlan case, which stressed the need for mechanisms to resolve ethical disputes within health care. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations requirement for hospitals, nursing homes, and home care agencies to have a standing mechanism to address ethical issues has also fostered this development (this requirement no longer appears in the Joint Commission regulations, however).

Despite initial doubts as the possibility of importing what was initially felt to be a specificity of the US system, ethics support services have developed in many other countries, including Canada^[1] but also various countries in Europe^[2] and Asia.^[3]

In order to share experience and resources among these clinical research ethics consultation and support services, networks and platforms have increasingly developed.^[4] This page is intended to summarise existing online resources aimed at assisting new and developing clinical ethics support services. Its goal is to make these resources more easily accessible. Listing in this page does not constitute endorsement of the various contents: users will still need to judge the value of these resources for themselves.

It is reasonable to suppose that these resources will increasingly be international. Because of the role of the English language in international communication, multi-lingual resources whose languages include English are given in their English title. Those not available in English are given in their original language.

Clinical ethics consultation networks

Listed by country

National and international guidelines on clinical ethics

Listed by country

Clinical ethics committee guidelines

Many clinical ethics support services develop guidelines and advise policy within the health care setting. While the conclusions of consultations regarding individual patients are, of course, confidential, general ethical guidelines and policy advice regarding ethical difficulties which come up repeatedly in clinical care are not. Some ethics support services make these guidelines available online. Adding yours will make these resources more useful!

Listed by country

Methodological resources

Some networks and consultation services have developed tools and guidelines for the practice of clinical ethics consultation, and made them available online. The following sites provide tools, documents, and advice for new or developing clinical ethics support services:

Online books

Principles of Biomedical Ethics (Tom L. Beauchamp, James F. Childress)

Ethics Consultation: from theory to practice (Mark P. Aulisio, Robert M. Arnold, Stuart J. Youngner)

Ethics Consultation (John La Puma, David L. Schiedermayer)

Cambridge textbook of bioethics (Peter A. Singer, Adrian M. Viens)

Selected articles

ASBH Task Force on Health Care Ethics Consultation: Nature, Goals, and Competencies

Clinical bioethics integration, sustainability, and accountability: the Hub and Spokes Strategy by the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics

Clinical ethics, information, and communication: review of 31 cases from a clinical ethics committee (Norway)

Moral Deliberation in the Netherlands

Clinical ethics consultation in Switzerland

Report on the conference “clinical ethics consultation: theories and methods—implementation—evaluation,” February 11–15, 2008, Bochum, Germany

Online tutorials

Listed by language

International and national conferences

International Association of Bioethics

International Conference on Clinical Ethics and Consultation

See also

References

Further reading

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
  • "Principle of Beneficence in Applied Ethics"
  • "Respect"
  • "Advance Directives and Substitute Decision-Making"
  • "Decision-Making Capacity"

External links

• Bioethicsweb at Intute: Clinical ethics committees
• Johns Hopkins ICTR Research Ethics Consulting Service