Hastings Center News

Introducing Clinical Ethics Case Studies in Hastings Bioethics Forum

Each year, tens of thousands of clinical ethics case consultations are performed in hospitals around the country. These consultations respond to fraught, complex questions from patients, families, health care professionals, and others about values-based conflicts and uncertainties that affect patient care. Clinical ethics services offer nonbinding advice at no charge to patients; these services are distinct from legal counsel, risk management, or patient care services with their specific focus on ethical analysis and problem-solving. Given their timeliness and relevance–anyone who provides or receives medical care could at some point become involved in a clinical ethics case—Hastings Bioethics Forum is pleased to launch a periodic series of essays, written by clinical ethicists and based on real cases. Read the first case.

The purpose of this series is to illustrate how clinical ethicists analyze, process, and address complex cases, and to stimulate conversation about the ethical issues that ethics consultation services grapple with.

Clinical ethicists are invited to submit cases for consideration to the series editors. See the writers’ guidelines. In addition to selecting the essays, the series editors provide a co-authored commentary on each published case, noting points of agreement or disagreement with the authors, citing lingering questions, and highlighting the broader ethical issues raised.

Hastings Bioethics Forum welcomes comments from readers, and we look forward to productive engagement and sharing of experiences and insights.

Editorial Team, Clinical Ethics Case Studies

Gina Campelia, PhD, HEC-C
Assistant Professor, University of Washington School of Medicine

Thomas Cunningham, MS, MA, PhD, HEC-C
Bioethics Director, Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Medical Center

Laura Guidry-Grimes, PhD, HEC-C
Associate Staff Bioethicist, Cleveland Clinic

Adira Hulkower, MS, JD, HEC-C
Director of Clinical Ethics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Debjani Mukherjee, PhD, HEC-C
Associate Professor, Weill Cornell Medical College

 Devan Stahl, PhD, HEC-C
Assistant Professor, Baylor University

Editor, Hastings Bioethics Forum
Susan Gilbert, Director of Communications, The Hastings Center