United States Department of Veterans Affairs
United States Department of Veterans Affairs

National Center for Ethics in Health Care

Ethics Consultation

The National Center for Ethics in Health Care provides consultation on questions of health care ethics to VHA leaders and field-based ethics programs on request. The Center also serves as a resource to VHA national program offices, external stakeholders, and governmental agencies outside of VHA. Generally, requests for ethics consultation from veteran patients or their families are referred to local ethics resources.

The Center's Ethics Consultation Service promotes ethical health care practices throughout VHA by providing:

  • a forum for discussion of health care ethics concerns
  • assistance with health care ethics problems that cannot be resolved locally
  • practical advice to VHA leaders and ethics programs
  • accurate information about health care ethics standards and VA policy
  • access to the collective expertise of the Ethics Center
  • responses tailored to requesters' needs
  • referral to additional ethics resources

 

ECWeb: web-based ethics consultation management tool

ECWeb is a web-based tool that plays an important role in helping VHA achieve the goal of improving ethics quality within VA. The program was designed and developed as part of the IntegratedEthics initiative.

Learn about ECWeb and access the ECWeb online learning module