A shelter for intoxicated homeless -- a cause for ethics committees?

Rosemary Flanigan
July 24, 2009

Denise, an email correspondent, has thrown down a gauntlet.

To the question, “How can our ethics committees do something ‘practical?’” she says: Needed: a shelter (other than a hospital bed) for intoxicated homeless. And she buttresses her request with good ethical principles and sees it as a matter of distributive justice.

That set me to thinking: What if the ethics committee at Denise’s hospital were to send a request to all ethics committees in our city to garner support for such an idea? I can see the committee chairs calling on the VP for Mission Effectiveness or the Development office to see if funds were available.

But a lot of spade work would have to be done first—and that is the place where my own lack of imagination and ingenuity bogs down.

HELP!! How “practical” ought ethics committees to be?? Anyone who isn’t on vacation, help us out here!!!

Chaplains and Ethical Analysis

Rosemary Flanigan

July 8, 2009

If you had the chance to talk to chaplains-in-training, what would YOU talk about?

Every chance I get, I talk about how to do an “ethical analysis.” Chaplains seem to be the last great listeners in healthcare delivery today, but their “listening” can profit from some structure—and teaching them how different ethical theories structure their listening, then teaching them, with examples, how to use something like Potter’s Box for structuring their responses seems a good way to spend time with them.

Hopefully, ethics committee members, especially the consultation teams, should be able to do this like second nature. But how helpful it would be to have many other in-hospital groups develop the same way of thinking.

Often after an ethics committee meeting I wish everyone in the hospital could have been present!!

Hospital Ethics Committees -- Then & Now

Hospital ethics committees evolved in the late 1970s and into the 80s.

In this edition of The Bioethics Channel Rosemary Flanigan talks about how hospital ethics committees began and their future.