Building in ethics at the American Medical Association: a case study in purpose, structure, and management

Ethics is becoming institutionalized. And many questions are raised thereby. Can ethics help institutions? What problems are involved in being an institutional ethicist? What are the appropriate connections and boundaries between institutions and ethicists? How do responses to these questions help guide the institutional structures that must be built to accommodate ethicists' presence? The following case study of creating an institute for ethics at a major national medical association and of concurrently building up existing ethics structures provides a case study in which these questions received some context-specific answers.