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Pediatric Ethics Committees: Ethical Advisers or Legal Watchdogs?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Robert F. Weir
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Extract

Over the past ten years or so, an increasing number of health care institutions have established institutional ethics committees (IECs) for the purposes of education, policy making, and review of cases. Proponents of IECs view them as important interdisciplinary mechanisms that improve decision making in the complex cases that sometimes arise in clinical medicine. Critics of IECs tend to interpret them as threats to the autonomy of physicians and an unnecessary bureaucratization of decision making. In spite of these criticisms, IECs seem to have filled an important role in many institutions and have a reasonably secure future.

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Article
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Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , Fall 1987 , pp. 99 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1987

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