Ethics Consultations

Coping With Ethical Issues

The Pittsburgh Mercy Health System (PMHS) wants to assist patients, their families, and its staff of caregivers in making ethical decisions regarding health care. The Ethics Committee of Pittsburgh Mercy Health System is a resource established for that purpose, to help patients, their families, physicians, nurses, and other caregivers in making ethical decisions. Members of the committee serve as a resource to any person when difficult questions arise.

The Ethics Committee includes doctors, nurses, community representatives, ethicists, and other caregivers. The group aids caregivers in integrating human values into the health care decision-making process. The committee strives to protect the rights of patients as well as the rights of those involved in carrying out those decisions.

A Resource To Serve You

The responsibility of the Ethics Committee is to provide advice. The committee can make helpful recommendations in difficult medical care situations.

Requests for help from the Ethics Committee are encouraged when:

• A patient, family members or health care provider wants help to "talk through" important ethical concerns in the patient's care;
• Efforts by the patient, family and professional staff to resolve an ethical issue have reached an impasse;
• There is a serious ethical disagreement among health care providers or within the patient family relationship;
• The case is ethically complex.

An ethics consultation may be needed in decisions about life-prolonging medical treatments for patients unable to decide for themselves, or when disagreement has made communication or cooperation impossible, or when those involved in caring for a patient want to consider other ethical perspectives.

Ethics consultation is an advisory service. Patients, family members and health care providers remain responsible for their own decisions.

How To Request An Ethics Consultation

If you would like to consult with a member of the Ethics Committee, please contact the Vice President, Mission Integration, at 412-232-7625 or 412-232-7990, or on evenings, nights, and weekends, please page the chaplain on call at 412-232-8112.

A member of the Ethics Committee will contact you about the nature of the issues involved. If a formal ethics consultation is appropriate, then a meeting with at least three members of the ethics committee, the patient and or family members, and the caregivers involved in the care of the patient will be arranged to discuss the ethical issues involved. A written recommendation is made as a result of this meeting.

PMHS Mission & Values Statement