As health care takes such forms as a magic blue pill for erections and gene therapy for cancer, people have higher and higher expectations. They do not accept error or tragedy well, especially as the time for creating a therapeutic bond shrinks. Sometimes in lectures I show a New Yorker slide picturing the Grim Reaper about to collect a man near his front door. Ethics committees Most committee members are good-hearted volunteers who want to do the right thing and help others do the same. But ethics committees have problems.
Few committees have budgets.
Most have been unable to help with issues concerning outpatient medicine, managed care or genetics. Cost seems to come before quality. Executives' salaries soar out of sight. Physicians must spend more of their time with paperwork and documentation than with patients and families. Now ethics committees have an open window.