BMJ  2004;328:950-952 (17 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7445.950

Education and debate

Development of clinical ethics committees

¹ Ethox Centre, Institute of Health Sciences, Oxford OX3 7LF

Support for dealing with ethical issues in clinical practice should be an integral part of patient care

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Clinical practice raises a wide variety of ethical issues that can be difficult for individual doctors to resolve. Some NHS trusts have established clinical ethics committees to provide ethical support. These committees had largely worked alone until a meeting of committee representatives in January 2001 led to the development of the UK Clinical Ethics Network. The principal aims of the network are to promote the development of clinical ethics support in the United Kingdom, to encourage a high level of ethical debate in clinical practice, and to facilitate sharing of best practice between clinical ethics committees (box 1).¹ We consider the emergence of clinical ethics support in the context of similar development in other countries.

Clinical ethics support can be described as the provision of support and advice to health professionals and patients on ethical issues arising from clinical practice or patient care. The support can take different forms, but . . . [Full text of this article]

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