PROFESSIONAL ISSUES

Ethics consultants get doses of realism through simulations

The growing use of role-playing exercises helps train those engaged in the tricky art of resolving ethical conflicts.

Kevin B. O'Reilly, AMNews staff. Aug. 11, 2008.

For complete article: http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2008/08/11/prsa0811.htm

 

Robert Baker, PhD, director of the Union Graduate College bioethics program, which also does ethics consult simulationsÉ said they are critical to improving ethics outcomes.

"We're using some sophisticated methods to train people to be clinical ethicists and research ethicists," Baker said. "It cannot be the case that the only nonprofessional group of people working in a hospital are the ethicists. The ethics people have to be just as competent, just as professional and just as well-trained as everybody else in the health care setting."

Baker sits on a committee recently formed by the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities, the organization that represents clinical bioethicists, to examine what, if any, training should be required of ethics consultants