Naslov
Clinical Ethics Consultation in Croatia: Between the Needs and the Possibilities (Example of the University Hospital Rijeka)

Autori
Sorta-Bilajac, Iva

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Izvornik
The 9th World Congress of Bioethics: The Challenge of Cross-Cultural Bioethics in the 21st Century. Book of Abstracts / Sorta-Bilajac, Iva ; Blažević, Ivana ; Tancabel, Ana - Rijeka : The International Association of Bioethics, University of Rijeka - School of Medicine, The Croatian Society for Clinical Bioethics, 2008

Skup
The 9th World Congress of Bioethics: The Challenge of Cross-Cultural Bioethics in the 21st Century. 5th Symposium of the International Society for Clinical Bioethics: Clinical Ethics and Decision-Making in a Pluralistic World.

Mjesto i datum
Rijeka, Hrvatska, 04.09.2008

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
: Ethics; Clinical; Ethics Consultation; Ethics Committees; Clinical; Ethics Committees; Research

Sažetak
Healthcare Ethics Consultations – HEC are services offered by an individual or group with the goal of aiding a patient, family, guardians, healthcare workers, and all other included parties during the confrontation with uncertainties or conflicts related to issues weighted by moral values present within the system of healthcare. They are divided into two basic groups: Clinical Ethics Consultations - CEC and Organizational Ethics Consultations. The system of Clinical Ethics Consultations recognizes three levels: 1. Ethics committees (work in larger groups), 2. Smaller groups for counseling (team or group consultation, as e.g. subgroups of ethical committees), 3. Individual counseling (individual consultation, i.e. face to face). Consultations by smaller consultation groups (team consultations) or consultations by individual consultants are not developed in Croatia. According to literature, currently all clinical ethical work in Croatia is done by ethics committees on medical faculties or in hospitals. Thus, it could be deduced that the Croatian experience of clinical ethics (more specifically of the process of making moral judgments in the clinical surrounding) is shaped only by ethics committees. It is especially important to emphasize that in analyzed papers – where analysis of ethics committees’ activity, composition, functions, and members’ education in ethics was performed (on 241 healthcare institutions) – review of scientific and clinical research protocols was underlined as the main activity, neglecting other important functions (education, case analysis and consultations, development of guidelines and institutional protocols). Such situation additionally complicates request for help in solving ethical dilemmas in everyday clinical practice. A reason for such situation may be the fact that our ethics committees are of the so called “ mixed type” . They actually represent a combination of functions of the research ethics committee and clinical ethics committee. From the year 2002, concrete efforts of the National Bioethics Committee of the Republic of Croatia (formed on October 25th 2001) were made on the national level to split up research-ethical and clinical-ethical functions, and to officially form these two types of committees in Croatian healthcare institutions. The proposal of the National Bioethics Committee was accepted only in 2006, and through the amendments on the Healthcare Protection Act the institution of the so called “ drug committee” was isolated from the former ethics committee. Unfortunately, this act is seen mostly as to satisfy legal requirements. The review of a decennial activity of the Committee on Ethical Issues of the Clinical Hospital Center Rijeka (from its foundation on January, 15th 1997, to the end of the year 2006), substantiates the generally present Croatian trend of analyzing scientific-research protocols of clinical research as a dominant function.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Kliničke medicinske znanosti, Javno zdravstvo i zdravstvena zaštita, Pravo

POVEZANOST RADA