The Lake City Hospital Institutional Ethics Committee provides guidance and support when ethical concerns arise in patient care, clinical research, or healthcare decision-making. The committee helps patients, families, healthcare professionals, and researchers navigate complex situations with compassion, respect, transparency, and consideration of individual values.
Ethics consultations can help clarify ethical concerns, improve communication between patients, families, and healthcare teams, and support decisions that respect patient rights, dignity, safety, and informed preferences. Consultations are handled with sensitivity and confidentiality and are focused on facilitating constructive discussions and ethical decision-making.
Consider requesting an ethics consultation when there are:

• End-of-life care decisions including questions about continuing, withholding, or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment.
• Refusal of treatment, when a patient declines recommended or potentially life-sustaining medical care.
• Disagreements about a patient’s care, including conflicts between patients, family members, or members of the healthcare team.
• Concerns regarding a legally authorized representative, including uncertainty about who should make decisions or disagreements about decisions made on behalf of a patient.
• Patients who lack decision-making capacity, particularly when there is no clear family member or representative available to participate in healthcare decisions.
• Concerns about potentially non-beneficial or medically inappropriate treatment, including situations where the goals of treatment and expected benefits are unclear.
• Advance care planning and directives, including questions about interpreting or applying a patient’s documented healthcare preferences.
• Informed consent concerns, including questions about whether a patient has adequately understood the proposed treatment, its risks, benefits, and alternatives.
• Confidentiality and privacy concerns, particularly when healthcare information needs to be shared with family members, representatives, or other parties.
• Ethical concerns related to discharge planning, especially when there are questions about patient safety, appropriate care arrangements, or continuity of care after discharge.
• Clinical research and participant protection, including concerns regarding informed consent, participant rights, confidentiality, safety, or ethical conduct of research.
• Concerns about professional or ethical responsibilities, when healthcare professionals face difficult ethical questions related to patient care.

Collaboration with Other Departments
The Institutional Ethics Committee may work collaboratively with relevant hospital departments, including clinical teams, administration, legal advisors, and other appropriate professionals, when an ethical concern also involves legal, regulatory, or institutional considerations.
The purpose of an ethics consultation is not to replace clinical or legal decision-making, but to provide an independent ethical perspective, facilitate communication, and help those involved reach a thoughtful and respectful approach to complex healthcare decisions.