ABSTRACT
The organizational ethics committee or ethics consultation service offers organizational support to respond to conflicts in value streams by identifying the nature of the misalignment and assisting to resolve the conflict to promote meaningful healthcare experiences. In addition to the dialysis situation, the Karen Ann Quinlan case in New Jersey in 1976 involving the right to refuse treatment even when it meant the death of the patient added additional emphasis on ethics committees. Based on Aulisio’s observations, ethics committees emerged to address healthcare situations in which “value-laden questions” and “clashes between values in a pluralistic context” occur in an environment in which there is “a relative time-pressure for decision-making”. For organizations working to implement meaningful experience design, the members of the ethics committee represent an important resource for obtaining ethics consultations when conflicts in beliefs, values, and principles occur in the value streams.
