Ethical Leadership: Fostering an Ethical Environment & Culture ...

Part I: Introduction to IntegratedEthicsfor organizational change.[29] It was developed by VA’s National Center for Ethics in HealthCare with extensive input from leaders and staff in VA Central Office and the field, expertpanels and advisory groups, and reviewers within and outside the organization. Materialsdeveloped for IntegratedEthics underwent validity testing, field testing, and a 12-monthdemonstration project in 25 facilities. Now, the expectation is that every VA health carefacility will implement the IntegratedEthics model to ensure ethics quality in health care.Levels of Ethics QualityEthics quality is the product of the interplay of factors at three levels: decisions and actions,systems and processes, and environment and culture. The image of an iceberg helps toillustrate the concept of ethics quality in health care:• At the surface of the “ethics iceberg” lie easily observable decisions and actions,and the events that follow from them, in the everyday practices of a health careorganization and its staff.• Beneath that, however, organizationalsystems and processes drive decisionmaking. Not immediately visible inthemselves, these organizational factorsbecome apparent when we look forthem—for example, when we examinepatterns and trends in requests for ethicsconsultation.• Deeper still lie the organization’s ethicalenvironment and culture, which powerfully,but nearly imperceptibly shape its ethicalpractices overall. This deepest level oforganizational values, understandings,assumptions, habits, and unspokenmessages—what people in the organizationknow but rarely make explicit—is criticallyimportant since it is the foundation foreverything else. Yet because it’s onlyrevealed through deliberate and carefulexploration, it is often overlooked.Decisions & actionsSystems & processesEnvironment &cultureTogether, these three levels—decisions and actions, systems and processes, andenvironment and culture—define the ethics quality of a health care organization.Image courtesy of Uwe Kills. Used with permission.Many ethics programs make the mistake of spending too much time in a reactive mode,focusing only on the most visible of ethical concerns (i.e., the “tip of the iceberg”). Butto have a lasting impact on ethics quality, ethics programs must do more: They mustcontinually probe beneath the surface to identify and address the deeper organizationalfactors that influence observable practices. Only then will ethics programs be successful inimproving ethics quality organization-wide.IntegratedEthics targets all three levels of ethics quality through its three core functions,discussed in detail below: ethics consultation, which targets ethics quality at the level ofdecisions and actions; preventive ethics, which targets the level of systems and processes;and ethical leadership, which targets the level of environment and culture.