SCIENCE / MEDICINE : Ethicists Needed in Hospital?

All hospitals should employ a doctor highly trained in medical ethics to assist surgeons in making decisions about critically ill patients, a meeting of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons in Baltimore was told.

“Virtually every major hospital in the country now has an ethics committee, but every ethics committee needs an ethicist as a resource person to whom they can turn,” said Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics in Washington. The ethicist should be trained in patients’ rights, what is meant by “quality of life,” the moral and legal consequences of letting a patient die, and the costs involved, he said.