Saturday Morning in the Clinic (Essays‪)‬

A decade ago Mark Bliton and Stuart Finder suggested that clinical ethics consultants be "persistently guided" by the question "What do I need to know?" (1) Exploration of this question, they argued, is critical for two reasons. First, it helps consultants to figure out why the ethics consultation was requested in the first place, as well as to understand the details of the situation. Secondly, the conversation it prompts with the primary participants--patient, family, physicians, nurses--is the only way to elicit what they find "troubling and in need of resolution, and therefore what aftermaths they can live with in the light of what is most worthwhile to, and for, them." Relatively novice at the practice of clinical ethics consultation, we are a junior faculty member tracking toward tenure and a graduate student/ethics fellow training in the practice of ethics consultations and moving toward completion of a dissertation. In addition to our various other medical school obligations, we regularly carry the ethics pager, and when called--usually by a nurse or a resident--we come, oriented each time by this primary question: What do we need to know?