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Consultants and Committees: A Cooperative and Mutually Educational Enterprise

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Erich H. Loewy
Affiliation:
Medicine at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria and an associate professor of Humanities (Ethics) at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Extract

It is logical that to function properly ethics committees must be properly trained, and I believe that Griener and Starch's paper in this issue of CQ is an important contribution to such a point of view and to this field. Although written from the Canadian perspective, the paper should find broad resonance in other settings. Differences between national medical settings are interesting but not critical to the point Griener and Starch make, i.e., ethics committees should be trained and should continue to be trained.

Not all will agree on this position, because it rests on several presuppositions that not everyone will accept. According to such a thesis, ethics in general and medical ethics in particular has its own peculiar way of thinking, is based on a recognizable and acknowledged body of literature, and can be acquired by study. Further, such a view presupposes that persons who have acquired such a skill and broadened it by continual practice have developed an expertise lacking in others who have no familiarity with the field.

Type
Bioethies Education
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

Notes

1. Griener, GG, Storch, JL. The educational needs of ethics committees. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 1994;3:467477.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

2. Loewy, EH. An inquiry into ethics committees' understanding: how does one educate the educators? Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 1993;2:551–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

3. Loewy, EH. Ethics consultation and ethics committees: a functioning model for reaching consensus. Healthcare Ethics Committee Forum 1990;2:351–9.Google Scholar

4. Thomasma, DC. Medical ethics training: a clinical partnership. Journal of Medical Education 1979; 54:897–9.Google ScholarPubMed