The Role of Ethics Committees

Most hospitals today have an ethics committee, which is a group composed of various staff members and other individuals from the local community. The committee consults with staff and hospital administrators on cases that pose particularly challenging ethical dilemmas, but it has other functions as well. Begin this discussion by doing some research using the Capella library, your public library, or authoritative online sites. Then, in your post, answer the following questions:

• What are the primary duties of a hospital ethics committee?
• When it comes to consultation, what sorts of cases does the committee advise on? Does the committee simply command what should be done in such cases?
• In terms of professional roles, who usually sits on them?
• Assess the value of ethics committees to your professional role.
• If you have direct experience with ethics committees, consider sharing your observations with your peers.