Ethics by Checklist
Published last Friday in British Medical Journal, Daniel Sokol asked this question, "If you were a patient, would you prefer your medical team to use an ethics checklist?"
Washington Hospital Center already uses one apparently as a sort of "crib sheet" for the standard set of ethical issues that arise in the hospital, reports Sokol.
While it doesn't reassure me personally to think that my hospital could be doing ethics by checklist, it could perhaps be a way to ensure that glaring omissions aren't made by physicians doing rounds in a hurry or serve as a way for doctors themselves (rather than ethicists) to keep an eye out for ethical issues and to know when to call in the calvary.
Summer Johnson, PhD
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It does sound cringe-worthy at first, doesn't it?
But I suspect it has its uses. I know there's literature (no citations at hand) on the value of check-lists in other kinds of decision-making. People tend to overestimate their own ability to 'wing it.' As much as we ethicists would like people to be thinking about ethics in more nuanced ways, I think I can imagine cases where a good check-list would at least help ensure that a busy health professional hasn't missed something ethically crucial.
- by Chris MacDonald on Mar 11, 2009 at 2:46 AM | link