Quality and compassion are the cornerstones of our care. They are also the nucleus for our medical decision making. Ethical dilemmas in medicine are a common feature in today's hospital landscape, and many of those decisions can be complex and challenging.
Every CHW hospital has an Ethics Committee whose role is to educate, develop policy and support clinical decision making. These committees offer multi-disciplinary ethics consultation services to help patients, families, surrogates, and healthcare providers address uncertainty or conflict regarding value-laden issues that can emerge in health care. During an ethics consultation, many factors are weighed and considered, including medical facts; patient preferences; views of family, friends and caregivers; and religious, social, legal and administrative factors.
In providing compassionate care, it is inherent in our mission to consistently respect the values of our patients and to promote basic values of fairness, justice, and integrity. Above all, we vow to do no harm as we heal.
Conversations with Carol Bayley, PhD
Carol Bayley, CHW’s VP for Ethics and Justice Education, shares a series of conversations on topics of general interest in medical ethics.
