Ethics Committees in Health Care Institutions

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In making decisions about health care, patients, families, and physicians and other health care professionals often face difficult, potentially life-changing situations. Such situations can raise ethically challenging questions about what would be the most appropriate or preferred course of action. Ethics committees, or similar institutional mechanisms, offer assistance in addressing ethical issues that arise in patient care and facilitate sound decision making that respects participants’ values, concerns, and interests.

In addition to facilitating decision making in individual cases (as a committee or through the activities of individual members functioning as ethics consultants), many ethics committees assist ethics-related educational programming and policy development within their institutions.

To be effective in providing the intended support and guidance in any of these capacities, ethics committees should:

Serve as advisors and educators rather than decision makers. Patients, physicians and other health care professionals, health care administrators, and other stakeholders should not be required to accept committee recommendations. Physicians and other institutional stakeholders should explain their reasoning when they choose not to follow the committee’s recommendations in an individual case.
Respect the rights and privacy of all participants and the privacy of committee deliberations and take appropriate steps to protect the confidentiality of information disclosed during the discussions.
Ensure that all stakeholders have timely access to the committee’s services for facilitating decision making in nonemergent situations and as feasible for urgent consultations.
Be structured, staffed, and supported appropriately to meet the needs of the institution and its patient population. Committee membership should represent diverse perspectives, expertise, and experience, including one or more community representatives.
Adopt and adhere to policies and procedures governing the committee and, where appropriate, the activities of individual members as ethics consultants, in keeping with medical staff by-laws. This includes standards for resolving competing responsibilities and for documenting committee recommendations in the patient’s medical record when facilitating decision making in individual cases.
Draw on the resources of appropriate professional organizations, including guidance from national specialty societies, to inform committee recommendations.

Ethics committees that serve faith-based or other mission-driven heath care institutions have a dual responsibility to:
Uphold the principles to which the institution is committed.
Make clear to patients, physicians, and other stakeholders that the institution’s defining principles will inform the committee’s recommendations.

AMA Principles of Medical Ethics: II, IV, VII

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Council Reports

PDF Ethics Committees in Health Care Institutions

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Ethics Case Crisis Standards of Care

Related Opinions

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Opinion 1.1.1

Patient-Physician Relationships

At the heart of medicine lie relationships founded in a “covenant of trust” between patient and physician in which physicians commit themselves to responding to the needs and promoting the welfare of patients.

Opinion 1.1.7

Physician Exercise of Conscience

Preserving opportunity for physicians to act (or to refrain from acting) in accordance with the dictates of conscience is important for preserving the integrity of the medical profession as well as the integrity of the individual physician; Physicians’ freedom to act according to conscience is not unlimited; They are expected to provide care in emergencies, honor patients’ informed decisions to refuse life-sustaining treatment, respect basic civil liberties and not discriminate against patients on the basis of arbitrary characteristics.

Opinion 2.1.1

Informed Consent

Informed consent to medical treatment is fundamental in both ethics and law. Patients have the right to receive information and ask questions about recommended treatments so that they can make well-considered decisions about care.

Opinion 2.1.2

Decisions for Adult Patients Who Lack Capacity

Physicians should engage patients whose capacity is impaired in decisions involving their own care to the greatest extent possible, including when the patient has previously designated a surrogate to make decisions on his or her behalf.

Opinion 2.2.1

Pediatric Decision Making

In giving or withholding permission for medical treatment for their children, parents/guardians are expected to safeguard their children’s physical health and well-being and to nurture their children’s developing personhood and autonomy; Physicians should evaluate minor patients to determine if they can understand the risks and benefits of proposed treatment; The more mature a minor patient is, the better able to understand what a decision will mean, and the more clearly the child can communicate preferences, the stronger the ethical obligation to seek minor patients’ assent to treatment.

Opinion 4.2.1

Assisted Reproductive Technology

Assisted reproduction offers hope to patients who want children but are unable to have a child without medical assistance. In many cases, patients who seek assistance have been repeatedly frustrated in their attempts to have a child and are psychologically vulnerable. Those patients whose health insurance does not cover assisted reproductive services may also be financially vulnerable. Candor and respect are thus essential for ethical practice.

Opinion 5.3

Withholding or Withdrawing Life-Sustaining Treatment

A patient who has decision-making capacity appropriate to the decision at hand has the right to decline or halt any medical intervention even when that decision is expected to lead to his or her death, When a patient lacks appropriate capacity, the patient’s surrogate may halt or decline any intervention. There is no ethical difference between withholding and withdrawing treatment. When an intervention no longer helps to achieve the patient’s goals for care or desired quality of life, it is ethically appropriate for physicians to withdraw it.

Opinion 5.4

Orders Not to Attempt Resuscitation (DNAR)

Orders not to attempt resuscitation (DNAR orders) direct the health care team to withhold resuscitative measures in accord with a patient’s wishes. Physicians should address the potential need for resuscitation early in the patient’s course of care, while the patient has decision-making capacity, and should encourage the patient to include his or her chosen surrogate in the conversation.

Opinion 5.6

Sedation to Unconsciousness in End-of-Life Care

When a terminally ill patient experiences severe pain or other distressing clinical symptoms that do not respond to aggressive, symptom-specific palliation, it can be appropriate to offer sedation to unconsciousness as an intervention of last resort.

Opinion 6.1.1

Transplantation of Organs from Living Donors

Donation of nonvital organs and tissue from living donors can increase the supply of organs available for transplantation, to the benefit of patients with end-stage organ failure. Enabling individuals to donate nonvital organs is in keeping with the goals of treating illness and relieving suffering so long as the benefits to both donor and recipient outweigh the risks to both.

Opinion 10.7.1

Ethics Consultations

The goal of ethics consultation is to support informed, deliberative decision making on the part of patients, families, physicians, and the health care team. By helping to clarify ethical issues and values, facilitating discussion, and providing expertise and educational resources, ethics consultants promote respect for the values, needs, and interests of all participants, especially when there is disagreement or uncertainty about treatment decisions.