Guidance for Healthcare Ethics Committees

D. Micah Hester is Chair of the Department of Medical Humanities & Bioethics at UAMS College of Medicine, Arkansas, USA. He has over 20 years of bioethics experience. He has authored/edited numerous books and articles, and has served on the boards of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) and the Association of Bioethics Program Directors. Toby Schonfeld is the Executive Director of the National Center for Ethics in Health Care at the US Department of Veterans Affairs. Her ethics experience spans academia, government and private industry. An accomplished author and presenter, Dr. Schonfeld is a national leader, serving on the board of ASBH.

• Preface D. Micah Hester and Toby Schonfeld; Part I: 1. Introduction D. Micah Hester and Toby Schonfeld; 2. Brief introduction to ethics and ethical theory D. Micah Hester and Toby Schonfeld; 3. Healthcare ethics committees and the law Stephen Latham; 4. Understanding and addressing health disparities through a racial paradigm J. L. McCurdy and C. Y. Dupree; 5. Cultural and religious issues in health care Alissa Hurwitz Swota; 6. Moral distress Lucia Wocial; Part II: 7. Ethics consultation mission, vision, goals, and process Georgina D. Campelia and Denise M. Dudzinski; 8. A method of consultation D. Micah Hester; 9. Informed consent Jessica Berg; 10. Confidentiality and privacy: Traditional concerns and digital challenges Kenneth W. Goodman; 11. Decision-making capacity Arthur R. Derse; 12. Discharge challenges: Shifting from acute to chronic care Wayne Shelton; 13. Surrogate decision making Thomas V. Cunningham; 14. Advance care planning and end-of-life decision-making Nancy M. P. King and John C. Moskop; 15. Potentially inappropriate treatment and medical futility Thaddeus Mason Pope; 16. Cognitive dissonance and the care of patients with disorders of consciousness Joseph J. Fins; 17. Ethical issues in reproduction Anne Drapkin Lyerly; 18. Ethical issues in neonatology John D. Lantos; 19. Ethical issues in pediatrics Douglas S. Diekema and D. Micah Hester; 20. Neuroethics Paul J. Ford; 21. Ethical issues in clinical genetics Thomas May, Kelly East, Whitley Kelley and Jana Craig; 22. Challenging issues in surgical ethics: Intraoperative decision making, innovative surgery, and high risk operations near the end of life Darryl Schuitevoerder and Peter Angelos; 23. Psychiatric ethics Cynthia M. A. Geppert; Part III: 24. Conscientious objection Mark R. Wicclair; 25. Ethics committees and distributive justice Nancy S. Jecker; 26. Developing and implementing effective ethics policy Sabrina F. Derrington; 27. Ethics in and for the organization Margaret Moon; 28. The healthcare ethics committee as educator Kathy Kinlaw; 29. Understanding ethics pedagogy Felicia Cohn; 30. Quality assessment of healthcare ethics committees Katherine Wasson.