Bioethics and Palliative Care

Clinical Ethics Consultation is designed to assist patients, families, and healthcare professionals in identifying, analyzing, and resolving ethical dilemmas and issues. Clinical ethics consultation focuses on clinician-patient communication, including communicating bad news and disclosing medical errors, improving patient safety, and reducing medical errors and their impact. This is because the fulcrum of the clinician-patient relationship is communication. Effective communication that is clear, accurate, and timely is a prerequisite for improving patient outcomes and satisfaction, decreasing risk exposure, and providing quality patient care.

Clinical ethics consultation addresses issues such as: when there is a difficult decision to make that presents a challenge to the patient or clinician; when the values of patients and practitioners conflict; when a patient lacks the capacity to make decisions; when there is uncertainty about who should decide on the patient’s behalf; when a family requests to withhold information from the patient; when it is unclear whether the burdens of treatment are worth the expected benefits; when families request care that a patient has refused; resolving end-of-life issues; and other ethical issues that can arise during patient management.

There is strong evidence that ethics consultations can reduce the length of stay in care facilities, reduce lawsuits, improve the quality of care, resolve conflicts between providers and patients, and save the organization money.

The duties of a bioethicist include providing ethical guidance and counsel, ethical decision-making, conflict/dispute resolution, research ethics, addressing ethical considerations from an organizational perspective, and mentoring the development and implementation of ethics education programs for clinicians, staff, patients, families, and the hospital community.

With most ethics consults being on end-of-life issues, and expertise in difficult conversations such as breaking bad news and end-of-life (EOL) discussions, a palliative ethic of care is provided for patients in need of palliative and/or end-of-life care and their families. A palliative ethic of care focuses on developing patient and physician goals to improve quality of life, resolve end-of-life issues, and treat dying patients. A structured approach to end-of-life decision-making significantly improves the quality of care for patients with terminal illnesses.

End-of-life decision-making is often challenging for clinicians. It requires clear, consistent, and compassionate communication with patients and families. Helping dying patients and their families come to terms with death and make appropriate decisions is vital. This enables patients to “die well,” maintaining emotional well-being and reconciliation with loved ones. Prepared patients can bring closure to relationships and die peacefully. Such patients and their families are more satisfied with care and less likely to pursue legal action.

CLINICAL ETHICS CONSULTATIONS

When to seek an Ethics consult:

Difficult Case Scenarios Requiring Ethics Consultation

Who can request an ethics consult?

For ethics consultation, call Dr. Ama Edwin on 0206301163

Intercom line: 12213