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Ethics Case Consultation in Primary Care: Contextual Challenges for Clinical Ethicists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2009

ANNE SLOWTHER
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Extract

The development of ethics case consultation over the past 30 years, initially in North America and recently in Western Europe, has primarily taken place in the secondary or tertiary healthcare settings. The predominant model for ethics consultation, in some countries overwhelmingly so, is a hospital-based clinical ethics committee. In the United States, accreditation boards suggest the ethics committee model as a way of meeting the ethics component of the accreditation requirement for payment by Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs), and in some European countries, there are legislatory requirements or government recommendations for hospitals to have clinical ethics committees. There is no corresponding pressure for primary care services to have ethics committees or ethics consultants to advise clinicians, patients, and families on the difficult ethical decisions that arise in clinical practice.

Type
Special Section: Coming of Age in Clinical Ethics Consultation: Time for Assessment and Evaluation
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , October 2009 , pp. 397 - 405
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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