37th Annual Symposium, No Ethicist on Staff: The Challenge of Doing Ethics Consults
Event Cost
WVNEC Members $110
Non-Members $140
Course fee includes morning and afternoon breaks, lunch, course materials, and continuing education credits for those listed in the brochure. Registration is limited to 100 registrants.
Series Description
Most hospitals, especially those with fewer than 300 beds, and certainly most nursing homes, hospices, and home care agencies, do not have ethicists. Nonetheless, the Joint Commission has an Element of Performance Standard in the Leadership chapter, LD.04.03, “The [hospital] develops and implements a process that allows staff, [patients], and families to address ethical issues or issues prone to conflict.” Furthermore, to provide quality patient-centered care, hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, and home health care agencies should have such a process to address values conflicts between patients/families and the treating team, between physicians and nurses or other health care staff, and within families if the conflict prevents timely decisions about patient treatment.
While such a standard is admirable, implementing such a process when there is not a person in the health care organization who has had advanced training in ethics can be challenging. This symposium will assist those health care organizations through…
- role modeling of a 7-step process of ethics consultation in three cases—the “permanent” hospital patient, moral distress over suboptimal care, and applying West Virginia Health Care law to proactively resolve family conflict—with panel and audience discussion;
- presenting a talk on ethics consultation in rural hospitals;
- describing the ethical concerns of patients and families, concerns that those doing ethics consults should be aware of and address; and
- explaining WVNEC’s tertiary ethics consultation approach in which ethicists from the WVU Center for Health Ethics and Law assist staff in hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, and home health to address ethical issues and contribute to their resolution in patient care.
The goal is to better prepare symposium attendees to perform ethics consultation in their health care setting. The target audience for this symposium is physicians, advanced practice nurses, physician assistants, nurses, social workers, chaplains, attorneys, and others who have an interest in this topic.
Credit
This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of the WVU School of Medicine and WVNEC. The WVU School of Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
The WVU Office of CME designates this live activity for a maximum of 5 AMA PRA Category 1CreditsTM. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
This continuing education activity has been provided by the WVU School of Nursing for 6 contact hours. The WVU School of Nursing is an approved provider of continuing education by the State of West Virginia Board of Examiners for Registered Professional Nurses, Legislative Rule #19CSR11-4 under provider number 50-26086.
This course is sponsored by the Center for Health Ethics and Law, Provider Number 490095, which is a Certified Provider of continuing education credits for social workers. This program has been awarded up to 5 hours of continuing education credit.
This program qualifies for a total of 5.7 credits under the West Virginia Rules for Mandatory Continuing Legal Education.
Series Learning Objectives
At the conclusion of this activity, participants should be able to:
- Role model the application of a 7-step process of ethical decision-making in cases in which there is ethical conflict;
- Describe the challenges of providing ethics consultation in rural hospitals;
- Discuss patient and family attitudes toward ethics consultation;
- Explain the West Virginia Network of Ethics Committees' tertiary ethics consultation service in which WVU Center for Health Ethics and Law ethicists assist hospital, nursing home, and hospice staff to address ethical issues and conflict in patient care in their settings; and
- Cite West Virginia healthcare law relevant to cases involving ethical conflict and discuss application to the cases.
Hotel
Stonewall Resort
940 Resort Drive
Roanoke, WV 26447
304.269.7400
Room Block Link expires on April 29.