Fox Ellen, Myers Sarah, Pearlman Robert A
National Center for Ethics in Health Care, Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC 20420, USA.
Am J Bioeth. 2007 Feb;7(2):13-25. doi: 10.1080/15265160601109085.
Although ethics consultation is commonplace in United States (U.S.) hospitals, descriptive data about this health service are lacking.
To describe the prevalence, practitioners, and processes of ethics consultation in U.S. hospitals.
A 56-item phone or questionnaire survey of the "best informant" within each hospital.
Random sample of 600 U.S. general hospitals, stratified by bed size.
The response rate was 87.4%. Ethics consultation services (ECSs) were found in 81% of all general hospitals in the U.S., and in 100% of hospitals with more than 400 beds. The median number of consults performed by ECSs in the year prior to survey was 3. Most individuals performing ethics consultation were physicians (34%), nurses (31%), social workers (11%), or chaplains (10%). Only 41% had formal supervised training in ethics consultation. Consultation practices varied widely both within and between ECSs. For example, 65% of ECSs always made recommendations, whereas 6% never did. These findings highlight a need to clarify standards for ethics consultation practices.
尽管伦理咨询在美国医院很常见，但关于这项医疗服务的描述性数据却很缺乏。
描述美国医院伦理咨询的普及率、从业者及流程。
对每家医院的“最佳信息提供者”进行一项包含56个项目的电话或问卷调查。
600家美国综合医院的随机样本，按床位规模分层。
回复率为87.4%。在美国，81%的综合医院设有伦理咨询服务（ECS），在床位超过400张的医院中这一比例为100%。在调查前一年，ECS进行的咨询中位数为3次。进行伦理咨询的大多数人是医生（34%）、护士（31%）、社会工作者（11%）或牧师（10%）。只有41%的人接受过伦理咨询方面的正规督导培训。不同的ECS内部以及之间的咨询做法差异很大。例如，65%的ECS总是会给出建议，而6%的ECS从不给出建议。这些发现凸显了明确伦理咨询做法标准的必要性。
