Beaumont Hospitals relies on personal referrals
Ethics committee members seek out new members
As with many professional positions, personal referrals from other health care providers are what typically lead to an opportunity to serve on the ethics committee at Beaumont Hospitals in Royal Oak, MI.
That hospital system includes 1,600 beds and four separate hospitals, including hospitals in Troy and Grosse Pointe, in addition to the Royal Oak facility.
"It's not difficult to find people who have an interest in our committee, and I think our committee has a solid reputation within the hospital system," Ernest F. Krug III, MDiv, MD, director of clinical bioethics, tells Medical Ethics Advisor.
Krug also head the hospital system's institutional ethics committee over all the hospitals, and each of the three hospitals offers ethics consultation services.
The corporate institutional ethics committee reviews any consultations completed by the three consultation services at the hospitals.
"If one of those consultation service chairs felt that there was a concern, they could feel free to call me, we could discuss it over the phone, we would meet . . . there are many options available," Krug says. "There is this kind of connectional system that we've created between those hospitals."
But as far as how people come to serve on the committee, it's much like a personal referral for most any position.
"In terms of how people would come onto the committee, suggestions would be made to me," Krug says. "I would typically have a nominating committee that would look at recommended people [that] would make recommendations back to the institutional ethics committee."
Krug also directs the consultation services at Royal Oak, which generally meets twice a month. He notes that the ethics committees do not "put a call out to the entire hospital."
"Basically, it's asking members of the institutional committee — present members — to make recommendations," he says, "and to talk to whomever they would like to talk to [in order to] find out who has an interest, [and] who has some background in terms of understanding of ethical issues and reading about ethical issues."
Krug says that the requirements for the institutional ethics committee "are not as strict" as those for the consultation services.
"For the consultation services, we want people who have had some background in clinical ethics, have done some reading, [and] like to do continued reading," Krug notes. "We like for the people who are on the consult service to have been through some type of a training course."
Sources
For more information, contact:
- Ernest F. Krug III, MDiv, MD, Director of Clinical Bioethics, Beaumont Hospitals Medical Administration, Royal Oak, MI. E-mail: [email protected]
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