Preventive Ethics - National Center for Ethics in Health Care - US ...

Part II: Introduction to Preventive Ethics
approach targets educational activities to address identified quality gaps (e.g., clinical staff
have significant misconceptions about the appropriate use of life-sustaining treatment), sets
specific goals (e.g., 80% of clinical staff will complete the training and score at least 70 on
the post-test), and then evaluates the effectiveness of the activities in meeting those goals.
A quality improvement mindset is similarly useful when developing or updating policy or
ensuring that the facility maintains accreditation readiness with respect to ethics standards.
At the same time, the broad institutional perspective and special skills of those who carry
out ethics maintenance activities can inform and enhance the work of those who carry
out ethics quality improvement cycles. For example, in the course of addressing an ethics
quality gap in employee privacy, the preventive ethics team might identify the need for a new
policy in this area and request assistance from the group responsible for maintaining ethics
policy.
Identifying members of the preventive ethics core team
Each facility should designate a specific Preventive Ethics Coordinator who will be
responsible for directing its preventive ethics function, managing all preventive ethics
activities, and reporting to the facility’s IntegratedEthics Program Officer. Each facility also
needs a core team of one to four individuals who are trained in the principles and practices
of preventive ethics. It’s important that the core team members work together regularly
to develop their collective knowledge and skill at performing preventive ethics activities.
Improvement teams are more likely to succeed if team members complement one another’s
strengths and weaknesses, respect one another’s contributions, and have previous
experience working together as a team.[46] Having a small but nimble core of trained
individuals can also allow the organization to handle multiple ethics issues concurrently by
establishing separate workgroups that include ad hoc members who are knowledgeable
about the specific ethics issue the workgroup is addressing. For example, if the preventive
ethics core team establishes a workgroup to address a systemic ethics issue in human
resources, it would be vital to include an ad hoc member with knowledge of relevant human
resource processes. If relevant expertise isn’t included, it’s unlikely the core team will
succeed in narrowing the ethics quality gap. In fact, it’s actually more likely that the gap
between current practice and best practice will widen.[47,28]
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