4 Advocate for and facilitate ethical decision-making in one’s workplace.
OL 4 is about facilitating ethical decision-making in your institution within and beyond your department. The clearest way to work on this competency is to be involved with the ethics committee within your institution. The Association of Professional Chaplains have guidelines for chaplains and ethics which note the importance of the chaplain’s involvement by bringing light to the patient’s spiritual and moral perspectives.[1] You will be using ITP 4 and PIC 7 competencies to complement OL 4.
I was able to find a helpful study for situations where ethics committees are not removed from the equation. 100 Polish chaplains were asked when they are approached about helping in ethical decision making with 30% of them saying they have been asked.[2] The study noted that the chaplains feel a deficit of expertise with ethical issues and a majority of them study and network with experts to overcome this. It also noted that the development of ethics committees and better ethics education for the Polish chaplains is needed. One step to take is to get an initial grasp on the broad areas of healthcare ethics, Robert Tom wrote an introduction that covers many areas and provides further resources after each chapter.[3]
[1] Association of Professional Chaplains, “Guidelines for the Chaplain’s Role in Health Care Ethics,” Reading Room, https://www.apchaplains.org/resources/reading-room/guidelines-for-the-chaplains-role-in-health-care-ethics/.
[2] Waldemar Głusiec, “Hospital Chaplains as Ethical Consultants in Making Difficult Medical Decisions” Journal of Medical Ethics (2022); 256.
[3] Robert Hall, An Introduction to Healthcare Organizational Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
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