{"id":2623,"date":"2013-09-19T10:43:39","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T09:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=2623"},"modified":"2013-09-19T10:43:39","modified_gmt":"2013-09-19T09:43:39","slug":"biases-in-clinical-ethics-consultation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2013\/09\/19\/biases-in-clinical-ethics-consultation\/","title":{"rendered":"Biases in Clinical Ethics Consultation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest post by Morten Magelssen, Reidar Pedersen, and Reidun F\u00f8rde<\/strong><\/p>\n

Read the full paper here<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

A difficult case involving a patient in an intensive care unit is brought to a clinical ethics consultant. \u00a0The ethics consultant argues that intensive care is futile and should be withdrawn. \u00a0The clinicians are grateful for the advice, and, with the assent of the patient\u2019s relatives, decide to withdraw intensive care accordingly.<\/p>\n

Clinical ethics consultation \u2013 by committees or individual consultants \u2013 involves reflection upon ethically and medically challenging cases. \u00a0When reflection is carried out in a systematic manner, then ideally the ethically salient points are brought out and discussed in a comprehensive and unbiased way.<\/p>\n

But what if the consultation itself introduces new biases and implicit value judgments? \u00a0We won\u2019t take a stand on how often this in fact happens, but rather draw attention to how easily it may occur and the dangers involved. \u00a0In our JME<\/em> article<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span> we identify six sources of bias \u2013 or conflicts of interest \u2013 in clinical ethics consultation. For instance, in the case above, the ethics consultant could be biased towards the interests of health-care professions, or towards the hospital\u2019s interests in keeping costs down and maintaining an unblemished public image. \u00a0In general, we argue, the potential for harmful biases is greater when the consultation is performed by an individual consultant rather than by a committee.<\/p>\n

The introduction of new, harmful biases through ethics consultation, a process intended to reduce<\/i> biases, would be problematic (and somewhat ironic). \u00a0Especially considering that, in the eyes of clinicians, the conclusion and advice of ethics consultation may appear to bear a stamp of \u201dethically approved\u201d.<\/p>\n

We are fundamentally optimistic about the positive role clinical ethics consultation can play in aiding clinicians in the management of ethically complex cases. \u00a0However, ensuring the quality of clinical ethics case deliberations is vital. \u00a0Although biases can never be completely eradicated, the identification of potentially significant biases is an important part of quality improvement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest post by Morten Magelssen, Reidar Pedersen, and Reidun F\u00f8rde Read the full paper here. A difficult case involving a patient in an intensive care unit is brought to a clinical ethics consultant. \u00a0The ethics consultant argues that intensive care is futile and should be withdrawn. \u00a0The clinicians are grateful for the advice, and, with […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[968,2153,443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clinical-ethics","category-guest-post","category-jme"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}