Arık Tuğba, Michl Susanne
Berlin Institute of Health, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Institute of the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
J Eval Clin Pract. 2025 Feb;31(1):e14310. doi: 10.1111/jep.14310.
To meet concerns about ethical and unethical behavior in their work environments and workplaces, organizations began establishing ethics programs that contain ethics committees (ECs). There is now a tradition and diverse use of ECs for ethical decision-making in many different organizational settings. In addition, ECs have been subject to many publications in books and articles in the scientific literature. Yet, until now no comparative analysis has been published that brings together ECs' practices in different sectors.
This article aims to bridge this knowledge gap and illustrate which main requirements for ECs' practices need to be addressed to help ECs meet their anticipated functions.
To do so, this paper lays out a study based on an exploratory, qualitative design using focus groups and individual expert interviews that compare ECs' practices in the healthcare, banking, and scientific research sectors (as far as dual use of research is concerned).
Based on the results of this study we were able to make a distinction between two main categories: moral authority and trustworthiness. We were also able to identify three sub-categories: legitimation, mode, and outreach.
Based on the exploratory analysis in this study, we conclude that there are the following three distinct main requirements for the functionality of ECs: (1) a dialog between EC members and other stakeholders, (2) an approach that considers various possible modes (reactive, screening, moderating, and preventive) to enhance the quality of ECs' decision-making processes and (3) an outreach to all relevant EC stakeholders for the further validation of the main requirements found for ECs functionality.
为了应对工作环境和工作场所中有关道德与不道德行为的问题，各组织开始设立包含伦理委员会（ECs）的伦理计划。如今，在许多不同的组织环境中，伦理委员会在伦理决策方面有着传统且多样的应用。此外，伦理委员会在科学文献的书籍和文章中也有诸多相关出版物。然而，到目前为止，尚未有发表的比较分析将不同部门伦理委员会的实践汇集在一起。
本文旨在填补这一知识空白，并阐明伦理委员会实践的哪些主要要求需要得到解决，以帮助伦理委员会履行其预期职能。
为此，本文开展了一项基于探索性定性设计的研究，采用焦点小组和个人专家访谈的方式，比较医疗保健、银行和科学研究部门（就研究的两用性而言）伦理委员会的实践。
基于本研究的结果，我们能够区分出两个主要类别：道德权威和可信度。我们还能够识别出三个子类别：合法化、模式和外展。
基于本研究中的探索性分析，我们得出结论，伦理委员会的功能有以下三个不同的主要要求：（1）伦理委员会成员与其他利益相关者之间的对话；（2）一种考虑各种可能模式（反应性、筛查性、调节性和预防性）以提高伦理委员会决策过程质量的方法；（3）向所有相关的伦理委员会利益相关者进行外展，以进一步验证为伦理委员会功能找到的主要要求。
