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Take a critical look at the dynamics of the ethics consult meeting in a debriefing, as a way to improve the process, an expert suggests.
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Hospital ethics committees need to review their hospitals' policies and approach to medical error reporting to determine whether or not the approach is a principled one, an expert says.
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The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) has published a report about end-of-life care, emphasizing the importance of more personal and private discussions about the topic.
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President Barack Obama has called for an investigation of U.S. human subjects research protections in response to last fall's disclosure that in the 1940s U.S. public health researchers deliberately infected Guatemalan research subjects with syphilis while testing penicillin.
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Hospital ethics committees and consultants can improve their own understanding of cultural clashes between the institution and patients/families by first considering the culture inherent in an ethics consult.
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Some of the core principles of medical ethics are patient determination, doing good for patients, and doing justice. These also are some of the chief attributes of palliative care, experts say.
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Hospital ethics committees sometimes find they are drawn into local cases that reflect national debates over healthcare costs and policies.
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Hospital ethics committees could clarify and improve the way they handle issues involving life support in the intensive care unit (ICU) if they brought more nuance to any definition of the word "futile," an expert says.
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President Obama's administration reversed its decision to revise a Medicare regulation to include paying physicians to discuss good advance care planning with patients.
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Hospital ethics boards seeking a solution for efficiently and effectively documenting and assessing ethics consultation work could find a best practice in the ethics consultation web (ECWeb) program developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in Washington, DC, experts say.