Abstract
Background: Despite national increase in pediatric ethics consultation volume over the past decade, protected time and resources for healthcare ethics consultancy work has lagged. Methods: Correlation study investigating potential associations between ethics consult volume reported by recent national survey of consultants at children’s hospitals and five programmatic domains. Results: 104 children’s hospitals in 45 states plus Washington DC were included. There was not a statistically significant association between pediatric ethics consult volume and hospital size, rurality of patient population, or number of consultants. Academically-affiliated children’s hospitals had fewer ethics consults compared to nonacademically affiliated. Association was found between full-time equivalent (FTE) hours and number of ethics consults (p < 0.0001). Spearman rank correlation between ethics consult volume and FTE was 0.5. Conclusions: While the results of this study should be interpreted with caution, investment in protected time for ethics consultancy work may translate into increased volume of pediatric ethics consults.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 135-142 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | AJOB Empirical Bioethics |
Volume | 14 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2023 |
Keywords
- Pediatrics
- ethics
- ethics consultation
- healthcare ethics
- organizational ethics
- pediatric ethics
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Health(social science)
- Philosophy
- Health Policy