Growing an ethics consultation service: A longitudinal study examining two decades of practice

Little is known about what factors may contribute to the growth of a consultation service or how a practice may change or evolve across time.

This study examines data collected from a busy ethics consultation service over a period of more than two decades.

We report a number of longitudinal findings that represent significant growth in the volume of ethics consultation requests from 19 in 1990 to 551 in 2013, as well as important changes in the patient population for which ethics help is requested. The findings include (1) a steady growth in requests from primary care providers (e.g., physicians and nurses), as well as increases in ancillary services (e.g., social workers); (2) a decrease in length of stay (days) before ethics help is requested; (3) an increase in the reasons that individuals ask for help from ethics; (4) an upsurge in consults requests from areas outside the intensive care unit (ICU); (5) a decrease in patients that died during hospitalization (e.g., live discharges); and (6) growth in the numbers of patients lacking decision-making capacity.

We believe the increases in consult requests reflect appropriate and necessary growth because recent consultations have also been associated with consultations requiring (7) additional interventions and (8) reasonably high time intensity scores.