Table 4.

Diversifying clinical ethics committees

Suggestion IV – Diversifying clinical ethics committees

On an organizational level, the diversity of the members of a clinical ethics committee may enhance the epistemic competency of the committee as different social positions come with different epistemic standpoints, conceptual know-how and experiential knowledge [5, 54, 72]. Magelssen and colleagues [73] suggest that ethics committees should include representatives from patient organizations or other types of counselling or self-help institutions, and argue that the inclusion of people who are not directly employed by the hospital may counter (implicit) biases towards the hospital’s interests. A careful composition of clinical ethics committees may thus allow for the identification and correction of biases.