Should CAEP establish an ethics committee?
News
CJEM 2000;2(2):129
Emergency physicians grapple with difficult ethical issues every day. When should we stop resuscitation? Should we treat an 11-year-old without her parents’ knowledge? What resources do we have to help us deal with these difficult questions? The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP) does not have an ethics committee. Should we? The American College of Emer-gency Physicians and the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine both have ethics committees, as do most other Canadian specialty societies. Are we missing something? Are there interested people who have the skills and time to make it a reality? What would its mandate be?
A proposal will be submitted to the CAEP executive at our annual conference in June. Interested members will be invited to provide feedback on the concept of an ethics interest group and, ultimately, an ethics committee. Suggested objectives for the Bioethics Interest Group are to
- identify the most important ethical issues facing emergency medicine in Canada;
- gather information and prepare position papers on relevant issues for CAEP membership and executive;
- identify the bioethics CME needs of Canadian emergency physicians and suggest ways to address these.
Objectives and terms of reference would be open to revision pending feedback from the executive and members.
Does CAEP need an ethics committee? Should we proceed and, if so, how? Should the terms of reference be expanded to include other activities? I encourage all members to attend the annual meeting in Saint John, NB, and consider coming to the Bioethics Interest Group planning meeting. As the originator of this proposal, I would like your feedback. Please contact me.
Merril Pauls, MD
Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre and
Dalhousie University
Halifax, NS
merril_pauls@yahoo.com
