IntegratedEthics Program

“We want to make sure we are integrating ethics throughout our organization. But we’re not sure how to do it.”

If this statement sounds familiar, you are not alone. These are some of the common challenges facing today’s health care organizations:

• Many health care organizations have an ethics consultation service, but do not know how to evaluate and ensure ethics consultation quality.
  
• Ethics programs tend to be primarily reactive and case-based, and lack effective approaches for addressing ethical issues proactively and systemically.
  
• Leaders are not always aware of ethical problems in their organization until a crisis occurs. 

To address these and other challenges, VA has developed IntegratedEthics—a dynamic, new, systems-focused model for ethics in health care. It establishes a national, standardized, comprehensive approach that ensures ethical practices are based on both rules and values.

IntegratedEthics offers practical, user-friendly tools to help health care leaders and staff: respond to ethical questions at the level of actions and decisions through Ethics Consultation; address ethics quality gaps at the level of systems and processes by applying a quality improvement approach in Preventive Ethics; and foster a strong ethical environment and culture through Ethical Leadership.

Use These Tools and Training Materials to Implement VA’s IntegratedEthics Approach in Your Institution:

IntegratedEthics Materials and Tools

IntegratedEthics introductory video (10 min.) [WMV]
This ten-minute video provides an introduction and overview of the benefits of IntegratedEthics.

IntegratedEthics: Improving Ethics Quality in Health Care   

Video with descriptive captioning

IntegratedEthics: Improving Ethics Quality in Health Care [PDF]
This 13 page primer outlines how IntegratedEthics is organized at the local level providing background and details on each of the functional areas – Ethics Consultation, Preventive Ethics, and Ethical Leadership.

Ethics Consultation: Responding to Ethics Questions in Health Care
These support and educational materials are for use by ethics consultants to help them use the CASES approach. Click here to access these or to find out more about more about ECWeb.

Preventive Ethics: Addressing Ethics Quality Gaps on a Systems Level
Click here to view quality improvement related materials for persons involved in addressing ethics quality gaps by utilizing the ISSUES approach to systemic change.

Ethical Leadership: Fostering an Ethical Environment & Culture
Click here for access to materials and educational materials supporting the Four Compass Points for leaders.

Follow this link for direct access to a directory of all IntegratedEthics materials.

Sign up to Receive Future Notices of Opportunities to use IntegratedEthics in Your Organization 

VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care (Ethics Center) is interested in identifying health care professionals who would like to partner with the Ethics Center in the future to modify IntegratedEthics tools and materials for use beyond VA. Click here to add your name to our mailing list and be notified of opportunities when they become available.