Ethics, risk, and patient-centered care: how collaboration between clinical ethicists and risk management leads to respectful patient care

Patient-centered care is driven in part by the ethical principle of autonomy and considers patients' cultural traditions, personal preferences, values, family situations, and lifestyles. Patient decision-making capacity, surrogate decision making with or in the absence of a patient's advance directive, and the right to refuse treatment are three patient-care issues that are central to the work done by both the risk manager and the clinical ethicist that have strong relevance to patient-centered care. This article discusses these three issues briefly and offers two challenging case studies involving patient-centered care that illustrate how a clinical ethics consultation may help to avert the escalation that can lead to a tort claim.