As everybody knows, advances in medicine and medical technology have brought enormous benefits to, and created vexing choices for, us all – choices that can, and occasionally do, test the very limits of thinking itself. As everyone also knows, we live in the age of consultants, i.e., of professional experts who are ready, willing, and able to give us advice on any and every conceivable question. One such consultant is the medical ethics consultant, or the medical ethicist who consults.Medical ethics (...) consultants involve themselves in just about every aspect of health care decision making. They help legislators and judges determine law, hospitals formulate policies, medical schools develop curricula, etc. In addition to educating physicians, nurses, and lawyers, amongst others, including medical, nursing, and law students, they participate in clinical decision making at the bedside. (shrink)
Whether ethics is too important to be left to the experts or so important that it must be is an age-old question. The emergence of clinical ethicists raises it again, as a question about professionalism. What role clinical ethicists should play in healthcare decision making – teacher, mediator, or consultant – is a question that has generated considerable debate but no consensus.
As everybody knows, advances in medicine and medical technology have brought enormous benefits to, and created vexing choices for, us all – choices that can, and occasionally do, test the very limits of thinking itself. As everyone also knows, we live in the age of consultants, i.e., of professional experts who are ready, willing, and able to give us advice on any and every conceivable question. One such consultant is the medical ethics consultant, or the medical ethicist who consults.Medical ethics (...) consultants involve themselves in just about every aspect of health care decision making. They help legislators and judges determine law, hospitals formulate policies, medical schools develop curricula, etc. In addition to educating physicians, nurses, and lawyers, amongst others, including medical, nursing, and law students, they participate in clinical decision making at the bedside. (shrink)
In a recent article, Steinkamp, Gordijn, and ten Have discussed a new way of thinking about the ethics consultant's ethical expertise. After critiquing their model of ethical expertise, along with the notion that discourse can and will enable ethicists to consult without over-reaching, this essay suggests that the debate about ethical expertise is intractable because it constitutes a 'tragic choice'.
Given how long bioethics has been around, how long bioethicists have devoted themselves to tackling ethical issues, how much work has gone into professionalizing the practice of clinical ethics consultation, how often bioethicists have either testified as experts in court proceedings or attached their names to amicus curiae briefs, and how ubiquitously they are present throughout the clinical, research, administrative, and other dimensions of health care, one would have thought that a convergence of opinion would exist on what it is (...) that the clinical ethics consultant's expertise consists of—if only for reasons of professional solidarity and reputation management. And yet, as a recent series of articles written by... (shrink)
This commentary asks whether ongoing efforts to accredit, certify, and credential hospital ethics consultants are nothing other than an illegal restraint on trade masquerading as an effort to protect the public from harm.
“When the two come into conflict, democracy takes priority to philosophy.”Richard Rorty“There are some people who use philosophy to lead people astray.”St. AugustineAs any seasoned litigator knows, occasionally one interposes an evidentiary objection not simply for the sake of preventing this or that from occurring in court, but also for the purpose of alerting a court to and educating it about the likelihood that it will have to rule on what may prove to be a substantial evidentiary dispute. Instead of (...) waiting until a trial has begun and somebody else’s expert witness is ready, willing, able and - most of all - present to testify, it can be useful to file a motion in limine, a pre-trial motion that seeks to bar or set limits to an expert’s testimony. (shrink)
“When the two come into conflict, democracy takes priority to philosophy.”Richard Rorty“There are some people who use philosophy to lead people astray.”St. AugustineAs any seasoned litigator knows, occasionally one interposes an evidentiary objection not simply for the sake of preventing this or that from occurring in court, but also for the purpose of alerting a court to and educating it about the likelihood that it will have to rule on what may prove to be a substantial evidentiary dispute. Instead of (...) waiting until a trial has begun and somebody else’s expert witness is ready, willing, able and - most of all - present to testify, it can be useful to file a motion in limine, a pre-trial motion that seeks to bar or set limits to an expert’s testimony. (shrink)
