How are We Helping? Considerations in Evaluating and Growing Ethics Resource Programs

Abstract: Ethics resource programs, which may also be known as ethics liaison or ethics champion programs, are being implemented in a growing number of health care institutions. These programs serve as an adjunct to institutional ethics committees and/or ethics departments. Depending on the set up of the program, participants may be from specific disciplines (e.g., nursing) or may be multidisciplinary. Program participants have an interest in ethics and participate in programming and education with goals of fostering connection between staff and ethics services, embedding ethics into the institutional culture, and/or expanding the reach of ethics. Currently, the literature on the outcomes of such programs is sparse. The presenter of this submission is a nurse ethicist at an organization with a well-established ethics resource nurse program. The presentation will start with a brief overview of ethics resource programs. The presenter will then discuss the potential impacts of ethics resource programs and perspectives on who may benefit from these including participants themselves, patients and families, interdisciplinary colleagues, and the institution more broadly. This discussion will be framed through a lens of nursing ethics, which centers on relationships and relational obligations. The presenter will then suggest opportunities for outcome measurement and metric tracking to gather data to inform the development and growth of such programs.

Keywords: ethics resource program, outcome measurement, nursing ethics