SynthesisMedicine, health care, and philosophy2021
Evaluating the effectiveness of clinical ethics committees: a systematic review.
Synthesis in Medicine, health care, and philosophy, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed.
- At the edge of viability: neonatologists' moral experience under uncertainty in Türkiye.BMC medical ethics · 2026Article
- The VALUE Study: Exploring the Value of a Clinical Ethics Consultation Service at the "A. Gemelli" Hospital.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Hospital ethics committees: responsibilities, competencies and challenges.BMC medical ethics · 2026Article
- Exploring moral distress in research students in a paediatric humanitarian research setting: a qualitative study from the Mavrovouni closed controlled access center, Lesvos, Greece.BMC medical ethics · 2026Article
- Ethical Issues in a Pediatric Post-acute Care Hospital: Implications for Patients, Providers, and Ethicists.Journal of pediatrics. Clinical practice · 2025Article
- Translational bioethics in nursing: a conceptual review of definitions, applications and ethical implications.BMC medical ethics · 2025Review
- Moral Distress Consultation Services: Insights from Consultants.HEC forum : an interdisciplinary journal on hospitals' ethical and legal issues · 2025Article
- The New Organization of Ethics Committees in Italy: What is the Future of Clinical Ethics?Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2025Article
- Ethical Challenges in Information Disclosure and Decision-making in Prenatal Testing: A Focus Group Study of Chinese Health Professionals in Maternal and Child Health Services.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2025Article
- Article
- Preventing burnout from moral distress among prehospital emergency personnel through action research and targeted clinical ethics support.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Stretching oneself too thin and facing ethical challenges: Healthcare professionals' experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.Nursing ethics · 2024Article
- A review of clinical ethics consultations in a regional healthcare system over a two-year timeframe.BMC medical ethics · 2024Article
- Utilization and Evaluation of Ethics Consultation Services in Neonatal Intensive Care.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- The Effectiveness of a Hospital Ethics Committee in a Non-Western Country: Lessons from a Ten-Year Experience.Asian bioethics review · 2024Article
- Exploration of clinical ethics consultation in Uganda: a case study of Uganda Cancer Institute.BMC medical ethics · 2024Article
- Artificial Intelligence to support ethical decision-making for incapacitated patients: a survey among German anesthesiologists and internists.BMC medical ethics · 2024Article
- Clinical Ethics Consultations and the Necessity of NOT Meeting Expectations: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.HEC forum : an interdisciplinary journal on hospitals' ethical and legal issues · 2024Article
- Living ethics: a stance and its implications in health ethics.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2024Article
- How prehospital emergency personnel manage ethical challenges: the importance of confidence, trust, and safety.BMC medical ethics · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Clinical Ethics Committees (CECs), as distinct from Research Ethics Committees, were originally established with the aim of supporting healthcare professionals in managing controversial clinical ethical issues. However, it is still unclear whether they manage to accomplish this task and what is their impact on clinical practice. This systematic review aims to collect available assessments of CECs' performance as reported in literature, in order to evaluate CECs' effectiveness. We retrieved all literature published up to November 2019 in six databases (PubMed, Ovid MEDLINE, Scopus, Philosopher's Index, Embase and Web of Science), following PRISMA guidelines. We included only articles specifically addressing CECs and providing any form of CECs performance assessment. Twenty-nine articles were included. Ethics consultation was the most evaluated of CECs' functions. We did not find standardized tools for measuring CECs' efficacy, but 33% of studies considered "user satisfaction" as an indicator, with 94% of them reporting an average positive perception of CECs' impact. Changes in patient treatment and a decrease of moral distress in health personnel were reported as additional outcomes of ethics consultation. The highly diverse ways by which CECs carry out their activities make CECs' evaluation difficult. The adoption of shared criteria would be desirable to provide a reliable answer to the question about their effectiveness. Nonetheless, in general both users and providers consider CECs as helpful, relevant to their work, able to improve the quality of care. Their main function is ethics consultation, while less attention seems to be devoted to bioethics education and policy formation.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.