Objectives

1. Identify how education can serve as an ethics “preventive” strategy.

2. Describe the ive strategies that help prevent ethical issues from arising.

3. Give examples of how the varied knowledge and skills of HEC members can serveas an asset for HEC preventive education.

Case

Joan Johnson is a nursing director in a moderate-sized teaching hospital. She has served for2 years on the hospital’s ethics committee (HEC) and feels that, while well supported, the HECservice should have a more robust commitment to ethics education in order to avert at leastsome of the myriad ethical issues that the institution is seeing. For instance, the state legislaturerecently adopted a detailed new law that outlines surrogate decision-making when a patientlacks capacity for healthcare decision-making. In turn, the institution adopted a new withdrawalof treatment policy that closely mirrors the state law, but also reflects some best practices asoutlined in the literature. Given that she still sees problems arise around family decision-makingand that her own nurses are confused by questions of surrogacy, Joan would not only like to seethis policy disseminated among clinical staff members, but also like to see a robust educationalprogram around this very important topic.