Humber River Regional Hospital

JCB Partners:
Humber River Regional Hospital, Ethics Program

 

People and Roles:

Bioethicist: Bob Parke

 

Program Description:

Humber River Regional Hospital (HRRH) is a hospital with three sites with close to 600 beds. The hospital serves very diverse linguistic, religious, cultural and socio-economic communities. The bioethics program at HRRH is relatively new, founded in 2005, but it is growing and integrating throughout the hospital. Presently, there is a Bioethicist whose work is supplemented by Clinical Ethics Fellows. The program at HRRH is also aided by people in specialized roles who function as resources. In this context, HRRH has an active ethics consultation service which serves both staff and patients directly.

HRRH is also active in doing research in a wide variety of areas and as such has two research ethics boards (REB), an oncology REB and a non-oncology REB. These REBs meet monthly to review new protocols and review research that is ongoing.

 

Consultation:

The ethics consultation service is a resource which is easily available to help identify ethical issues, review options, make recommendations and facilitate decision making. All staff, physicians, social workers, nurses, rehabilitation team members, administrators, and staff who provide diagnostic information are invited to use the ethics service. Most importantly patients and their families are also invited use ethics consultation. Some of the issues which the ethics service has been consulted include:

  • Consent and Capacity
  • substitute decision-making
  • end-of-life care decisions: resuscitation & withdrawal of life support
  • preparing for Consent and Capacity Board Hearing
  • guidance with making treatment decisions
  • organ and tissue donation
  • discharge planning
  • patient autonomy and risk-taking: going home where they may be at risk
  • least restraint
  • artificial nutrition and hydration
  • moral distress
  • resource allocation
  • elder abuse: neglect and financial
  • privacy and confidentiality
  • infection control and public health issues
  • religious faith and treatment decisions

 

Education:

From the creation of the ethics service at HRRH with the involvement of staff, clinical ethics fellows and MHSc Bioethics students, we have been able to contribute to the education of staff at all levels through the participation in monthly orientation, rounds, Bioethics Interest Group Meetings and presentations. Some of the areas of education have been:

  • Case Studies in Public Health Ethics
  • History and Development of HRRH’s DNR Policy
  • When is Enough – Enough: Responding to unreasonable demands from SDMs
  • Lifting Maleficent’s Curse through Hand Washing: Do we have a moral duty not to infect others?
  • Emerging Issues in Bioethics: Ethics issues from Mental health, Medical Imaging, Respiratory Therapy, etc.
  • Workplace Violence from an Ethical Lens
  • Moral Distress: What’s that Uncomfortable Feeling I Have: Humber River Regional Hospital’s Mental Health Clinic Day (2007)
  • Bioethics and the Challenge of Technology
  • The Need for Pandemic Influenza Planning
  • Consent and Capacity
  • Bioethics from a faith based perspective
  • A Method to Evaluate an Ethical Case
  • A Foretaste of the Pandemic
  • Infection Control at the Intersection of Clinical and Public Health Ethics
  • Diagnostic Imaging and Ethics: Respecting the Best Interest of the Incapable Person
  • Guideline for Evaluating Capacity
  • Bioethics in End of life Care Planning and Moral Distress
  • Using Professional Ethics as our Guiding Compass
  • Complementary Medicine Use in an Acute Care Hospital
  • Patient Safety in Hospital Emergency Unit and Endoscopy Suite
  • Culture of Life: Politics at the Bedside: The Case of Terry Schiavo
  • Responding to the Increasing Demand for Dialysis

With the help of Mark Handelman of the Ontario Consent and Capacity Board, who is also a MHSc Bioethics graduate, a booklet on substitute decision making was created for patients, families and staff to provide knowledge abut the decision making process and what to do if there is conflict. Issues related to consent and capacity are an ongoing element of staff education which is addressed by the Bioethicist either as a presenter or through inviting experts to speak on specific issues related to this topic.

 

Working with the infection control team to provide staff education is also an ongoing educational endeavor as we explore areas of practical concerns and interest such as the duty not to infect others, vaccinations, pandemic influenza planning and duty to care.

 

Policy Development:

With HRRH team members researched and revised DNR policy (Resuscitation Code Status Policy) to reflect current best practice, the law with respect to consent and capacity, ensuring that SDMs make decisions that are in compliance with the principles for giving or refusing consent. As a related component of the policy we have now integrated DNR orders into the electronic charting that is done. This will provide staff with a worksheet that has a patient’s DNR status on it and will allow for easier research to be done the number of DNR orders that have bee written and what populations these have been acquired from.

 

With the assistance of a Clinical Ethics Fellow, HRRH team members created and developed a guideline for evaluating a patient’s capacity to make decisions for long term care placement. This guideline was created to help clinicians do capacity evaluations on patients whose capacity is uncertain. To help with this, an enhanced capacity evaluation questionnaire is included in the guideline as well as algorithm to ensure that due diligence is done in the evaluation process. As part of the process assessing patients to determine and respond to are any communication barriers that might make doing an accurate evaluation are also addressed.

 

Working with HRRH’s Risk Management team a policy on resolving with conflict with substitute decision makers about treatment decisions was developed and passed in July 2007. This policy includes information about the Health Care Consent Act, who can be decision makers, the principles for decision making, a framework for dispute resolution and the process to apply to the Consent and Capacity Board if a disagreement between the health care team and substitute decision makers cannot be resolved.

 

Working with the HRRH’s Trillium Gift of Life steering committee all the policies, procedures and protocols with respect to organ and tissue donation were revised and brought in line with the Trillium Gift of Life Act and the procedures and protocols of the Trillium Gift of Life Network.

 

Accomplishments and Ongoing Projects:

Making the everyday ethical. Over the past year thanks to HRRH and JCB colleagues the goal to heighten the awareness of the ethics involved in the everyday things we do such as in discharge planning, medical imaging, communicating with capable non-verbal patients, infection control and responding to the moral distress staff experience has been enhanced. This will be an ongoing area of interest and work.

 

Website:

Humber River Regional Hospital web link

 

Contact information:

Bob Parke
Humber River Regional Hospital
Phone: (416) 744-2500 ext.2533
Pager: (416) 334-5642
Email: bparke@hrrh.on.ca email link