Measuring the Value of Ethical Frameworks
A central focus of our work at Canmore Ethics is thinking about how organizational processes influence outcomes. We regularly find that when ethical issues occur, it’s not because of bad people acting negligently, but because the organization had no process for identifying and addressing ethical risk. Different tools exist for correcting this gap. One is a code of conduct; another is an ethics framework. Both of these are useful, but their value can be exaggerated. We have already explored the limits of codes of conduct in a previous article. Here, we discuss ethical frameworks.
How An Ethics Board Can Help Your Company
Data concerning aspects of our lives, including our health, is regularly collected by companies and healthcare systems. Since lax data protection policies can severely impact people, protecting that data is important for both ethical and business reasons: it will promote the safety and well-being of customers, and it will ensure that the company maintains trust with its users. However, identifying and addressing all of the relevant ethical issues can be daunting. One strategy is to adopt a research ethics board (REB) model.
Improve Decision-Making by Thinking Explicitly About Values
Ethical decision-making involves explicit recognition and consideration of ethical values: things like liberty, equality, well-being, and privacy. For many organizations, one of the most effective ways to make more ethical decisions is simply to be more explicit about the role values play.
Improving Advance Directives with Video
In the opening scene of Annie Hall, the film’s main character tells a joke about two elderly women who are lamenting the decline of a restaurant. The first woman says “‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know. And such small portions.’” If you’ll permit a health ethics joke, a similar lament applies to advance directives: They’re unhelpful and too few people have them.
This insight article describes some of the shortcomings of written advance directives and explains how making videos to accompany the legal document can help ensure patients receive the care they want.
Ethical Skills for Your Organization
This article describes some of the ethical skills Canmore Ethics focuses on when we work with organizations. Some of them are more appropriate for some roles than others, since building ethical capacity requires deliberation and tailoring to suit each situation. The vast majority of ethics education approaches are too blunt a tool to make meaningful progress. Instead, Canmore Ethics builds organization-specific strategies and resources that lead to more lasting improvements.
Four Steps to Patient-Centred Care: Moving Beyond the Buzzword
Patient-centred care is about providing care that aligns with the patient’s values: i.e., it’s care the patient actually wants and will benefit from. Despite the popularity of this concept, studies show that there’s a long way to go before it’s ubiquitous. In this post, we describe a four-step framework for implementing patient-centred care.
Why Your Hospital Needs Access to a Clinical Ethicist
There is overwhelming evidence that clinical ethicists provide tremendous value for patients, care teams, and hospitals. Where once clinical ethicists were only available at research and training hospitals, now, almost every hospital in the U.S. with more than 400 beds has one. This is because professional ethicists—especially those with advanced degrees in ethics and fellowship training—have consistently demonstrated the value of having access to experts in ethics advising.
Live Free or Guardianship: The Appropriate Standard
The Supreme Court of New Hampshire ruled that a guardian should disregard a patient’s stated wishes and make medical decisions according to the guardian’s view about the patient’s best interests. This goes against the consensus view in bioethics that wishes ought to be respected.