More than just medicine: Proactive approach responds to ethical issues facing medical care teams

Osaka, Japan – In recent years, advances in medical science have led to an increase in the number of medical treatment options available, making clinical decision-making more complex and leading to a variety of ethical issues.

In response, a number of hospitals have been establishing systems to provide clinical ethics consultation to medical care teams as support for the various ethical issues that arise in the medical field.

However, since the number of consultation cases remains low even on a global scale, the effectiveness of this system remains a challenge. Reasons for this include low awareness of clinical ethics consultation among hospital staff, uncertainty about which issues to consult on, and difficulty in clearly communicating their concerns about important but ambiguous issues.

To address the above issues, the research group clarified the specific strategies, potential benefits, significance, and points to keep in mind for effective implementation based on different practices of proactive ethics consultation at two hospitals.

In “inter-professional ethics rounds,” consultation teams visit hospital departments and communicate with medical staff in order to identify ethical issues and provide advice on how to resolve them. “Patient note reviews” involve reviewing patient records in departments where ethical issues are most likely to arise and working with the medical care team to identify cases that need to be addressed.

“We hope that the new methods we have implemented over the past few years will help other hospitals develop their ethics consultation teams more effectively,” says lead author of the study Atsushi Kogetsu. “Ultimately, we expect that these methods will lead to the resolution of ethical issues in clinical practice, the provision of better medical care, and the alleviation of moral anguish among medical staff.”

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The article, “Two approaches of ‘proactive consultation’: Towards well-functioning clinical ethics consultation,” was published in Asian Bioethics Review at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41649-024-00302-8

About Osaka University
Osaka University was founded in 1931 as one of the seven imperial universities of Japan and is now one of Japan's leading comprehensive universities with a broad disciplinary spectrum. This strength is coupled with a singular drive for innovation that extends throughout the scientific process, from fundamental research to the creation of applied technology with positive economic impacts. Its commitment to innovation has been recognized in Japan and around the world. Now, Osaka University is leveraging its role as a Designated National University Corporation selected by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to contribute to innovation for human welfare, sustainable development of society, and social transformation.
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