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Bioethics Consult Service

Department of Bioethics

The Department of Bioethics provides a Bioethics Consultation Service, which offers discussion and analysis of ethical issues that can arise at the NIH.

Bioethics consults can be requested by anyone who works at the NIH or who is connected to the NIH Clinical Center (patients, patients’ families, investigators, physicians, nurses, administrators, social workers, and pastoral care providers).

Consultations are usually performed by a small consult team comprised of members of the Department of Bioethics and members of the Clinical Center Ethics Committee and (on exceptional occasions) by the full Ethics Committee.

Many, though not all, of our consults focus on:

  • Ethical questions relating to how to best design or conduct research (e.g. how to appropriately protect vulnerable populations in research studies)
  • Ethical questions that arise in the care of individual research participants
  • Questions about whether a research participant is capable of providing informed consent to research. (The Bioethics Consultation Service is part of the Clinical Center’s Ability to Consent Assessment Team (ACAT)).

If you are unsure whether your ethical question falls within the scope of the Bioethics Consult Service, please do not hesitate to contact the consult team and they will do their best to help or refer you to a different resource.

To Call a Consult

The service is available 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

  • Call the Clinical Center paging operator (301-496-1211) and ask to be directed to the Bioethics Consult Service;
  • Call the Department of Bioethics directly (301-496-2429) during business hours; or
  • (For clinicians) put an order for a Bioethics Consult into the Clinical Research Information System (CRIS).

We recommend not to request consultations by email, as we may not be able to respond in a timely fashion. Research subjects and their families can ask someone on the research team to contact the consultation service, if they do not want to call directly.

Clinical Center Ethics Committee

The CCEC is comprised of about 25 people representing multiple disciplines, including physicians, nurses, lawyers, patient representatives, social workers, clergy, and community members. The CCEC participates in the Bioethics Consultation Service; the committee as a whole is also available for ongoing case consultation, and engages in retrospective case review. The CCEC also assists in the crafting of hospital policies relevant to bioethics. The Bioethics Consultation Service reports its consultative activities to the CC Ethics Committee. In turn, the Ethics Committee reports to the Clinical Center Medical Executive Committee.

Commonly Used Forms