Characterization of patients requiring inpatient hospital ethics consults- A single center study

Ethics consultations are often needed at difficult junctures of medical care. However, data on the nature of how patient characteristics, including race/ethnicity, language, and diagnosis, affect ethics consult outcomes are lacking.

We performed a retrospective cohort study of all patients who were seen by the Ethics Consult Service between 2017 and 2021 at a large tertiary academic center with the aim of determining whether patient demographic and clinical factors were associated with the timing of ethics consult requests and recommendations of the ethics team.

We found that patients admitted for COVID-19 had significantly longer median times to consult from admission compared with other primary diagnoses (19 vs 8 days respectively, p = 0.015). Spanish-speaking patients had longer median times to consult from admission compared to English speaking patients (20 vs 7 days respectively, p = 0.008), indicating that language barriers may play a role in the timing of ethics consultation.

This study demonstrates the need to consider clinical and demographic features when planning and prioritizing ethics consultations at large institutions to enhance consult efficiency, resource utilization, and patient experience and autonomy.