American Journal of Bioethics.
The question of whether clinical ethics consultants may engage in patient advocacy in the course of consultation has not been addressed, but it highlights for the field that consultants’ allegiances, and the boundaries of appropriate professional practice, must be better understood. I consider arguments for and against patient advocacy in clinical ethics consultation, which demonstrate that patient advocacy is permissible, but not central to the practice of consultation. I then offer four recommendations for consultants who engage in patient advocacy, and consider the implications of this issue for the field.
Open Peer Commentaries.
- Mediation and Advocacy
- Empowering, Teaching, and Occasionally Advocating: Clinical Ethics Consultants’ Duties to All of the Participants in the Process
- Do Clinical Ethics Consultants Have a Fiduciary Responsibility to the Patient?
- Clinical Ethics Consultants: Advocates for Both Patients and Clinicians
- A Place for Ethics? A Place for Advocacy?
- Will the Last Health Care Professional to Forgo Patient Advocacy Please Call an Ethics Consult?
