Clinical Ethics Consultation as a Multiprofessional Task

Clinical ethics consultation strives for an improvement in dealing with moral aspects in health care, in order to handle them in an equally professional and qualified way as any other medical or scientific (treatment) decisions. In recent years Clinical Ethics Committees (CEC) or similar boards for ethics consultation have been founded at many German hospitals. The main tasks of a CEC comprise education of staff in matters of clinical ethics, the development of ethics guidelines for the institution, and ethics case consultations. An effective ethics case consultation requires the participation of patient and/or relatives, of the entire multiprofessional team of care-givers, and of different (e. g., professional, gender) perspectives among the ethics consultants. Consultations focus on an individual moral deliberation and assessment of the specific case, concerning, e. g., patient benefits, moral significance of treatment decisions, and quality of life issues. Both indications for treatment options and patient preferences/consent have to be scrutinised. Future challenges for clinical ethics consultation include evaluation and quality assurance of services, and a broadening of services to nursing homes and outpatient care.