NEC Reports

Reports by VHA's National Ethics Committee (NEC) are intended to heighten awareness of ethical issues, articulate widely accepted standards in health care ethics, and provide practical, usable guidance for VHA practitioners, health care managers, and health policymakers to improve the quality of patient care. Because of the cross-cutting nature of the issues it addresses, in each of its reports the NEC strives to be sensitive to the perspectives of stakeholders to whom the topic under analysis is relevant. In preparing its reports, the committee seeks input from those VHA program offices that have special interest in an issue, such as offices responsible for VHA policies related to the topic area, and from appropriate field-based staff.

Click on the icon to download.

Ethical Considerations That Arise When a Home Care Patient on Long Term Oxygen Therapy Continues to Smoke (March 2010)

Advance Directives for Mental Health: An Ethical Analysis of State Laws & Implications for VHA Policy (February 2008)

Impaired Driving in Older Adults: Ethical Challenges for Health Care Professionals (September 2007)

Ethical Aspects of the Relationship Between Clinicians & Surrogate Decision Makers (April 2007)

The Ethics of Palliative Sedation (March 2006)

Compensation to Health Care Professionals from the Pharmaceutical Industry (February 2006)

Disclosing Patients' Protected Health Information to Surrogates   (February 2005)

Online Patient-Clinician Messaging: Fundamentals of Ethical Practice (July 2004)

Gifts to Health Care Professionals from the Pharmaceutical Industry (October 2003)

Ethical Boundaries in the Patient-Clinician Relationship (July 2003)

Disclosing Adverse Events to Patients (March 2003)

Ten Myths about Decision-Making Capacity (September 2002)

Recommendations for the Ethical Conduct of Quality Improvement (May 2002)

An Ethical Analysis of Ethnic Disparities in Health Care (August 2001)

Advance Proxy Planning (December 2000)

DNR Orders and Medical Futility (December 2000)