ABSTRACT
Thinking about "moral expertise" and the idea of ethics "consulting," I asked some physician friends about their experiences working with ethicists in the large urban medical centers in which they teach and practice. One replied that he had found ethicists helpful; they encouraged him to consider issues of autonomy and paternalism, for example, to which he might not otherwise have attended in those terms. After a thoughtful pause, he offered another evaluation. With all the personal and institutional pressures of medical practice in such environments, he suggested, it was important to have a place to go for that kind of thinking; having done it allowed him to feel more confident or more responsible about the decisions taken.
