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Ethics in Business and Patient Care

Quality and kindness form the basis for the decisions we make in both medicine and business. Some decisions are obvious, some routine, some automatic. Others are more complex and may put our values to the test.

Every Dignity Health hospital has an ethics committee whose role is to educate, develop policy and support clinical decision making. These committees offer multi-disciplinary ethics consultation to help patients, families, surrogates, and health care providers address uncertainty or conflict. During a consultation, the committee considers the medical facts and patient preferences, as well as the views of family, friends, and caregivers. Social, spiritual, legal, and administrative factors are carefully weighed.

We make it our mission to consistently respect the values of our patients and to promote basic values of fairness, justice, and integrity. Above all, we vow to do no harm.

Conversations with Carol Bayley, PhD

 

There are many complicated ethical issues in medicine, from conducting research to administering last-resort measures. In her series of articles, Dignity Health's vice president for ethics and justice education Carol Bayley, PhD shares her thoughts on the various problems with which we must sometimes grapple.

Brain Death Download PDF
Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation Download PDF
Cloning Download PDF
Cornerstones Download PDF
Stem Cell Research Download PDF
When Someone You Love Stops Eating and Drinking Download PDF