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August 2015 EACME Newsletter
Contents
Editorial R. Jox and R. Porz
Letter of the President C. Gastmans
Outpatient ethics consultation: needs of seeking advice persons S. Thiersch
Clinical ethics interventions in medical social organisations: towards an institutional integration of the ethical approach P. Boitte and J.P. Cobbaut
Evaluating moral case deliberation (MCD) by measuring perceived outcomes – the development and validating of the Euro-MCD instrument. A European study J. de Snoo–Trimp
Ethique clinique: l’importance d’être non autoritaire J. Martin
Clinical Ethics Services (CES) in small hospitals in Germany A. Dörries
Clinical ethics consultation in Italy: a new scenario is expected after the document of Trento F. Nicolia, M. Picozzi and R. Pegoraro
Starting an ethics support network for joint co-constructed professionalization of clinical ethics in the Netherlands F. Weidema
Getting ethics support into hard to reach places: A UK perspective M. Dunn
Editorial Board
Editorial
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
You are currently holding the latest newsletter of EACME in your hands, this time as a special edition on the topic CLINICAL ETHICS – DEBATES, TRENDS AND CHALLENGES. We chose this topic mainly for two reasons. This is, on the one hand, due to this year’s EACME conference in Sardinia, which is dedicated to exactly this topic (Sept 17-19, see: http://www.eacme2015.org). On the other hand, the discipline and practice of clinical ethics is becoming more and more professionalized and with this development, questions about implementation, quality assurance, and evaluation ensue. Unsurprisingly, this was also the topic of the International Conference on Clinical Ethics Consultation held in New York City this spring.
For these reasons, we invited you to contribute short manuscripts, e.g. on your experience about the status quo of clinical ethics evaluation in your respective countries. We are delighted that our invitation was so well received. This reaction shows that clinical ethics is still growing and gaining momentum in many European countries, despite some tough challenges that still need to be overcome. In some European countries, clinical ethics is still nascent or lacking at all, in others there are many clinical ethics committees or services, but their activities are marginal and they are not coordinated in a professional way. On this background, this special issue presents reassuring examples of coordinating and professionalizing clinical ethics, e.g. in the Netherlands and Italy. In order to ensure high-quality ethics consultation in health care facilities, the German Academy of Ethics in Medicine has recently introduced a program of certification that enables clinical ethicists to apply for three levels of certificates
based on the experience (ethics consultant, ethics coordinator, clinical ethics trainer).
Clinical ethics is also moving to areas that urgently need ethics support but have so far been neglected. Contributions in this special issue present innovative ideas and models how to implement ethics consultation in small hospitals, (medical) social facilities or the outpatient primary care setting. These are still pioneering works, but they underscore that ethics support is being increasingly valued and respected across diverse health care situations.
We would like to thank all the authors who have contributed articles to this special issue: Pierre Boitte and Jean Philipp Cobbaut (Lille, France), Andrea Dörries (Hannover, Germany), Jean Martin (Geneva, Switzerland), Federico Nicoli (Varese, Italy), Janine de Snoo-Trimp, Mia Svantesson and Bert Molewijk (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Sandra Thiersch (Munich, Germany), Froukje Weidema (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) and Michael Dunn (Oxford, United Kingdom).
Last but not least we would like to draw your attention to the “Letter of the President” by Chris Gastmans. Chris will finish his presidency in September after more than 13 years of active work for the Executive Bureau of the EACME (first as secretary-general, then as treasurer and finally as president). For the daily work of EACME this certainly means a huge loss. At the same time, we gladly look back on everything we could learn from him in the past years and are thankful for all the positive developments and ideas he has brought in for the continued existence of our society. We would like to thank him cordially, on behalf of the entire editorial team.
Ralf J. Jox – Guest Editor of this Special Issue
Institut für Ethik, Geschichte und Theorie der Medizin
Ludwig-Maximilians Universität
München
and
Rouven Porz – Editor-in-Chief of the EACME Newsletter
Ethics Unit
Bern University Hospital ‘’Inselspital’’
rouven.porz@insel.ch
Download the full August 2015 EACME Newsletter
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