IntegratedEthics

Improving Ethics Quality in Health Care

IntegratedEthics^TM (IE) represents a radical departure from the traditional approach to ethics in health care. Conceived in 1999, IE takes on the full range of health care ethics issues in a comprehensive, integrated fashion, establishing clear standards, roles, competencies, methods, and performance metrics. It is a multi-level, multi-faceted organization-wide program supported by a national policy, sophisticated training programs, validated evaluation tools, and a robust electronic data and communications network. Throughout the VA health care system, leaders are held accountable for IE through specific targets in their performance plans.

IntegratedEthics is based on principles of continuous quality improvement and strategies for organizational change that have proven effective in other fields. Through its Ethics Consultation function, IE provides much-needed assistance to patients, families, and staff. Through its Preventive Ethics function, IE introduces a novel quality improvement system that empowers staff to take on recurrent ethics problems on a systems level. And IE’s Ethical Leadership function helps leaders “walk the talk” to create a culture that inspires employees to “do the right thing.”

IE is more than a training program or a quality improvement intervention or the sum of new policies, standards, tools and structures – it is all of these and more. In short, IE is a transformational initiative that redefines ethics as it is both practiced and led in the health care arena.

IntegratedEthics: An Innovative Program to Improve Ethics Quality in Health Care  
This journal article describes the conceptual underpinnings of the IntegratedEthics model and the rationale for its development.

IntegratedEthics: Improving Ethics Quality In Health Care   
This ten-minute video provides an introduction and overview of the benefits of IntegratedEthics.
          Video with descriptive captioning   

Follow this link for additional IntegratedEthics materials.