Healthcare Ethics Committees and the Law

Every ethics committee member needs to know something about the laws that shape and govern the clinical encounter. This is not because the law will typically determine the answers to the questions faced by the committee – far from it! Most of the problems faced by HECs aren’t answered by any statute, regulation, or judicial holding. But that doesn’t mean that law is irrelevant to the work of ethics committees. In some cases, law may define the terms in which a particular problem is discussed: “She needs to get his informed consent.” In others, law may rule some possibilities out: “We can’t just turn her out into the street.” In still others, law may authorize or even require the committee’s deliberation: “We can’t avoid making this decision.” In sum, law works mostly not to solve ethics committees’ problems, but to shape them.