Challenges of hospital ethics committees: a phenomenological study

Medical ethics committees play an important role in examining and resolving ethical problems in hospitals by developing ethical guidelines and making ethical decisions. This study aimed at investigating the challenges that these committees typically face. This qualitative phenomenological study was conducted in 2020. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with purposive sampling and participation of 19 ethics committees’ members in Tehran hospitals. Then, data were analyzed by the content analysis method using MAXQDA-10 software. Challenges of hospital ethics committees were classified into three main themes including external factors, intra-organizational factors, and ethics committee structure, in addition to six sub-themes including inadequate supervision, lack of instructions, organizational culture, human resources, nature of the committee, and ineffectiveness of committees’ decisions. Since many challenges are faced by ethics committees, plans should be developed and implemented to fulfill the following purposes: (i) strengthen the position of these committees in hospitals, (ii) continuous supervision over the formation and holding of the committees, (iii) their operation process, (iv) their decision-making process, and (v) process of sharing committees’ decisions with all hospital stakeholders and staff.

Hospital Ethics Committees in accredited hospitals in Poland—availability of information

The role of Hospital Ethics Committees (HECs) is to support patients and their relatives as well as medical staff in solving ethical issues that arise in relation to the implementation of medical care. In Poland there are no clearly formulated legal regulations concerning the establishment and functioning of hospital ethics committees. Hospitals applying for accreditation are obliged to present solutions defining the way of solving ethical issues in a given institution, some of them appoint HECs for this purpose. The aim of this study was to analyze information concerning the functioning of hospital ethics committees in Poland on the basis of publicly available data published on the websites of accredited hospitals. Very few accredited hospitals (56) make public information about functioning in their ethics consulting facilities through hospital ethics committees. In most cases, the information provided on the functioning of HECs is general, both in terms of the committees’ functioning, type of cases under consideration and the composition of personnel.

Main challenges in adoption of consultation services of hospital ethics committees: A systematic review of the literature

Background There are numerous challenges in the consultation services of the Hospital Ethics Committees (HEC) that can impact the means of providing healthcare. This review aimed to identify the main challenges in the application of consultation services of the HEC and propose possible solutions. Methods This systematic review was conducted through searching electronic databases including PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, ProQuest, and Embase. Inclusion criteria included studies published in English language in a peer-reviewed journal, from 2000 to 2019 were identified, which clearly defined the design, method, and results of the study. Study selections, quality assessments, data extraction, and analysis were completed by two researchers, independently. The thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Results The search yielded 1204 articles and 6 of these, included the analyses. Challenges were categorized into 9 themes: (a) personal views and believes in healthcare professionals, (b) sense of fear in the healthcare professionals, (c) medical culture, (d) environmental factors, (e) managerial and structural factors, (f) characteristics of the HEC members, (g) factors related to the HEC, (h) problematic process for HEC consultations, and (i) weakness of knowledge about HEC. Accordingly, proposed solutions were organized according to five themes: reforming the HEC executive processes, creating the appropriate communications, developing awareness about HEC, improving the competencies of HEC members, and (e) receiving support from HEC consultations. Conclusions This review highlights that proposed solutions serve as examples of strategies, which attempt to solve challenges related to the application of the consultation services of HEC by healthcare professionals.

Main challenges in utilization of the consultations services of hospital ethics committees: a systematic review of the literature

Background : To responding ethical issues in clinical practice, hospital ethics committees (HEC) provide the ethics consultation for healthcare professionals. There are numerous challenges in the consultations services of HEC that can impact healthcare professionals and patients, families in the health care setting. This review aimed to identifies main challenges in utilization the consultations services of HEC and proposed possible solutions.Methods : This systematic review was conducted through searching electronic databases including PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, ProQuest and Embase. Inclusion criteria included studies related to the purpose of the review, publish in English language, were published in a peer-reviewed journal, from 2000 to 2019 and clearly defined the design, method and results of study. Studies selection, quality assessments, data extraction and analysis were completed on all included studies by two researchers independently. Quality assessment was based on the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) checklist. Finally, thematic analysis method was used to analyses the data.Results : The search originally yielded 1204 articles and 6 of these included to evidence analyses. After analyses the included studies, challenges were categorized in 9 themes: (a) personal views and believes in healthcare professionals, (b) sense of fear in the healthcare professionals, (c) medical culture, (d) environmental factors, (e) managerial and structural factors, (f) characteristics of HEC members, (g) factors related to HEC, (h) problematic process for HEC consultations, and (i) weakness in knowledge about HEC. Accordingly, proposed solutions were organized according to five themes of reforms in the HEC executive processes, creating the appropriate communications, developing awareness about HEC, improving the competences of HEC members, and (e) supporting from HEC consultations.Conclusions : This review highlights that proposed solutions serve as instances of strategies that attempted to solve challenges related in utilization the consultations services of HEC by healthcare professionals.