Clinical Ethics Consultation Affairs (CECA) Committee
In 2008, ASBH President Hilde Lindemann initiated the ASBH Clinical Ethics Consultation Affairs (CECA) standing committee to advise the Board on issues related to health care ethics, including the topic of certifying health care ethics (HCE)* consultants and/or accrediting programs that educate/train HCE consultants. This is to help ensure that actions the Board may take regarding HCE-related products or initatives are informed by an expert body who represents the scope of HCE practice, as the ASBH Board may not contain members at any given time who are practicing HCE consultants.
To ensure that CECA members are appopriately representative of practicing HCE consultants, the CECA charter and criteria for choosing CECA members was circulated to the Clinical Ethics Consultation Affinity Group (CECAG) listserv. To ensure transparency, the CECA members, charter, and all meeting minutes are posted here. Meetings are held in person during the ASBH conference, and by teleconference during the year.
Current listing of Clinical Ethics Consultation Affairs Committee members.
Meeting Minutes
February 16, 2012
January 19, 2012
December 8, 2011
November 10, 2011
October 13, 2011
September 8, 2011
August 11, 2011
June 9, 2011
May 12, 2011
April 14, 2011
February 10, 2011
October 24, 2010
June 2, 2010
February 9, 2010
January 7, 2010
October 18, 2009
September 29, 2009
Documents of Interest
CECA Report to the ASBH Board of Directors, October, 2010.
Early Education Code Development
Kenneth Kipnis and Stephanie Feeney
Medical Ethics Education in a Problem-Based Learning Curriculum
Kenneth Kipnis and Anita Gerhard
Committee Charter
Approved via Board email vote on 2/16/09
Proposal: To form an ASBH Standing Committee on Clinical Ethics Consultation Standards and Certification.
Goal: To develop standards for ethics consultants working in clinical settings and to ensure clinical ethics consultants' competency and integrity.
Background
The case for identifying standards for clinical ethics consultants (CECs) is grounded on the premise that their salient responsibilities are too important to be assigned to individuals who lack the requisite knowledge and skills and whose work is not governed by authoritative practice standards. This proposal anticipates a future in which health care facilities can and should have access to qualified clinical ethics consultants who are adequately trained staff to provide ethics consultation services. This proposal advances the development of standards and mechanisms that will allow health care organizations to retain CECs who appreciate the norms governing their work and who demonstrate mastery of the requisite knowledge and skills.
The overall goal of this proposal is to meet the needs of hospitals, patients, staff, and clinical ethics consultants as much as possible within the current structure and scope of ASBH, with the side-benefit of opening the organization to the many CECs who are not currently ASBH members.
Terms
The Committee will be formed with open-ended membership terms of 18 months for each member. Initially, the Chair will be appointed by the Board and then will recommend individuals to the Board for appointment to the Committee. The Board may appoint a new chair or co-chair as needed.
The Committee's purpose is to review and promulgate practice standards for clinical ethics consultation. As such, the Committee should represent the full range of clinical ethics consultation practice that falls within established standards. The Committee will have the authority to review and promulgate practice standards for clinical ethics consultation with the Board approval. The Committee may also make other recommendations to the ASBH Board as regards to clinical ethics consultation.
Tasks
CECA reviewed the final draft of the Core Competencies revision, suggested further minor modifications, and, in September, 2010, recommended that the Board approve it for publication.
In addition to vetting the revised Core Competencies, CECA provided a report on HCE consultant certification/accreditation/credentialing to the Board in October, 2010. This is posted on this website. In response, the Board requested that CECA prepare a Request for Proposals (RFP) to submit to companies to solicit cost estimates related to HCE consultant certification. This is part of the information-gathering process that CECA recommended the Board undertake. CECA is in the process of finalizing that RFP to submit to the Board.
CECA’s principal activity for 2012 is to develop a process by which practicing HCE consultants* will agree upon a Code of Ethics.The process for developing the Code is based on various previous efforts. First, in 2005, the ASBH Board of Directors appointed an Advisory Committee on Ethics Standards (ACES) to conduct a "needs assessment" for a code of ethics. Of members responding, 61% supported the idea of a professional code, while only 17% objected. In 2007, the Board authorized an Ethics Standards Project to seek funding for a code development process. Ken Kipnis and Bob Baker conducted a survey of ethical issues encountered by clinical ethics consultants. This informed the ACES report.
The ACES report, together with content from the first and second editions of the Core Competencies that describe ethical dimensions of practice, and the Draft Canadian Model Code of Ethics for Bioethicists, informed the Draft Code of Ethics for Health Care Ethics Consultants agreed upon by CECA members at their October 13, 2011 meeting in Minneapolis. The planned process for developing the Code is to circulate the Draft Code preface and professional responsibilities (with brief definitions of each) for a 60-day period of evaluation and comment from individuals practicing as health care ethics consultants. Comments and suggestions will be summarized and circulated after the open comment period, creating an iterative process until there is majority consensus among CECA (based on quantitative survey ratings and discussion among CECA members and Code Liaison Bob Baker of qualitative comments and suggestions). The ultimate goal is to create an initial Code that a majority of health care ethics consultants endorse. The draft Code will also be posted online (specific location yet-to-be-determined; this may be on the ASBH website or the CECAG Google Groups). After consensus on the Code preface and responsibilities is reached, CECA will proceed to write short 1-2 paragraph interpretative statements for each Code responsibility. These will be vetted in a similar manner (through online listserv dissemination, and possibly a wiki-type platform). A final Code ratification process, if any, has not yet been established. Suggestions for process improvements should be made to CECA Chair Anita Tarzian (
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
).
*As explained in the second edition of the Core Competencies for Health Care Ethics Consultation, HCE consultants work across a varied
range of health care ethics “subspecialties.” For example, a particular HCE consultant may specialize in clinical ethics, organizational
ethics, professional ethics, business ethics, education ethics, or research ethics. Given the considerable overlap among the subspecialties of health care ethics, and that a given ethics consultation rarely fits neatly into one subspecialty, the CC Update Task Force deliberately chose not to distinguish between subspecialties like clinical ethics, organizational ethics, and professional ethics, opting instead to use the broader and more inclusive term health care ethics. However, the colloquial use of the term “clinical ethics consultant” is acknowledged. To maintain consistency with the Core Competencies document, the official term will remain “health care ethics consultant.” NOTE: A separate group, The Core Competencies Update Task Force, revised the Core Competencies document--not the CECA Committee. The CECA Committee reviewed the final version of the Core Competencies, and after some minor revisions were incorporated, recommended its approval to the Board.
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