Beyond case discussions: Training committee members to contribute to clinical ethics work

Abstract: Healthcare ethics committees (ECs) benefit from including a diversity of disciplinary perspectives, but clinician volunteers likely have inconsistent education in clinical ethics. Often, committee education focuses on theoretical knowledge and case discussions with little emphasis on practical skills. Even ethics committee members (ECMs) who do not plan to lead ethics consultations should receive skills-based training so they better understand the process of ethics consultation, the complexity involved, and how the way the consultant frames an ethics question impacts the analysis and recommendations that follow.
This workshop will offer accessible, dynamic tools for teaching ECMs how to structure and write ethics questions. Our time together will be interactive, using conversation, reflection, and hands-on activities to practice the discrete steps involved. Exercises will highlight the importance of naming stakeholders and their values and demonstrating how defining the action under consideration guides the rest of the consult. We will invite participants to discuss barriers they have encountered when training EMCs and share our own, including unanswerable questions, negatively framed consult requests, and the difficulty ECMs face when they “change hats” between their day job and thinking about clinical ethics.
The workshop leaders are experienced clinical ethicists who regularly lead skills-based courses about ethics consultation for ECMs with a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. We have seen what works (and doesn’t) when teaching ECMs what clinical ethics truly involves so they can enhance their ability to meaningfully participate on the EC.