Committee Members -
Please conform to the following guidelines and recommendations when performing an ethics consultation.
1. When an ethics consultation has been completed and written up in a structured and formalized fashion, please forward by email attachment to the Committee chair, who will then review and forward to all members, so that all consultations may be reviewed prior to their discussion at the monthly meetings.
2. In honoring patient privacy and confidentiality, ethics consultations should be written so that all patient identifying information has been appropriately deleted and/or modified appropriately. Additionally, ethics consultations attached to email messages should not be forwarded via email (advertently or inadvertently) to secretaries, administrative support staff, or any other persons outside the membership of the Adult Ethics Committee.
3. To the extent that it is possible, in recognizing that all Committee members do not have a formal background in clinical medicine, medical terms should be modified and/or defined so that they may be understandable to all Committee members.
4. In the event that any Committee member has general questions or concerns regarding a particular ethics consultation performed by another member (as regards ethical decision-making, etc.), such concerns may be relayed in email via the "Reply-All" method, albeit in a constructive manner which reflects that level of mutual respect and collegiality expected amongst members of good will.
5. In the event that the situation arises where one Committee member has substantial and significant differences of opinion with the conclusions drawn by another member's recently completed consultation, it is recommended that such concerns be initially forwarded to the Chair or Vice-Chair of the Committee for review and potential resolution, prior to being emailed to all members. This is recommended in consideration of the fact that email is not secure under all circumstances, as well as to foster a more judicious review of the quality assessment of ethics consultations.
