Modern medicine, particularly in western societies, is characterised by several factors: tremendous scientific and technical progress, increasingly differing ethical values, emphasis on patient autonomy and growing economic pressures. These factors, as well as the conflicts of interest arising from them, caused and promoted the development of systematic ethics support services in clinical medicine.In the United States of America, this development started around the year 1920, when medical-moral committees were established in catholic hospitals. In 1962, Life Magazine published an article by Shane Alexander which described a non-sectarian working committee helping to decide who would receive dialysis, which was a scarce resource then. The members of this committee could not be identified on accompanying illustrations and, according to the contemporary understanding of objectivity, they would have no contact with the patients concerned. Since then, considerable changes have taken place. The criteria applied in clinical ethics consultation as well as the names of everyone involved in such a process are discussed openly and in transparent terms. While many hospitals in the USA started ethics support services for cases of ethical conflicts in the 1970s, Germany launched the first health care ethics committees only in the late 1990s.The University Medicine Greifswald established its own Clinical Ethics Committee in October 2010 consisting of 21 representatives of different professional groups. We want to contribute to the reassurance of our employees, our patients and their relatives that ethical issues have the highest priority in our hospital.
To achieve this, we
- organize educational events
- publish guidelines for recurring clinical ethics problems
- offer clinical ethics consultation in cases of ethical issues or conflicts
- support interdisciplinary and interprofessional discussions on ethical topics in healthcare to strengthen ethical competence in our staff
We are
- independent
- dedicated and versatile
- approachable and welcoming
- bound by confidentiality
Coordinator: Dipl.-Biol. Christin Korp
Office hours: Monday thru Friday 9am to 1pm
If you cannot reach us during regular office hours, please send us an email or leave a voice message.
We will attend to your request and call you back as soon as possible.
Clinical Ethics Committee
University Medicine Greifswald
Walther-Rathenau-Str. 49
D-17475 Greifswald
Phone: ++49 (0)3834 / 86-22308
Fax: ++49 (0)3834 / 86-7922308
E-mail: kek@med.uni-greifswald.de
