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Ethics committee offers consultation service A recent survey of hospital ethics committees around the country published in the fall 2001 issue of the American Journal of Bioethics noted that 86 percent participate in ethics consultation.  MUSC is no exception. Here, the Ethics Consult Service is available for clinical consultation 24 hours per day and seven days per week by contacting the consultant on call through the ethics pager, 17715. The service maintains a policy of open consultation whereby anyone with a legitimate interest in a case may contact this service arm of the ethics committee.  The current service director, Jeanine Gage, R.N., said that while the majority of consult requests come from the medical or nursing staff, several times a year requests come from patient surrogates or the patients themselves. The interdisciplinary Ethics Consult Service encourages the Medical Center staff or patients to use their services in ethically troublesome situations.  By involving the service, there is an increased likelihood that the following goals be met: To facilitate communication, conflict resolution, and shared decision making in patient care; To foster greater awareness among health professionals of the relationship of values (their own and their patient's) to health care decision-making; and To teach health professionals to recognize and resolve ethical problems. Recent committee chair, Sally Webb, M.D., said that at the peak of the MUSC Ethics Consult Service activities five to six years ago, the service received nearly 100 requests per year for ethics consultation.  She said that current numbers average closer to one call per week and are within the range of ethics consultations seen at busy teaching hospitals around the country.  Current Ethics Consult Service members include Jeanine Gage, Sally Webb, Penelope Chase, Walter Limehouse, Windsong Lanford, Sharon Coopersmith, James Campbell, Brenda Gumm-Carey, Terry Wilson, and Patrice Katsanevakis. The service meets twice monthly for peer review of its consultations and for ongoing self education about the core skills and knowledge necessary fro competent ethics consultation. While one of the ethics committee charges is to promote ethics educational programs for the Medical Center, medical ethics education is not new to MUSC. As early as 1971, an elective course in medical ethics was offered at the College of Medicine, and later expanded as an interdisciplinary course to include students from the College of Nursing. Albert Keller, D.Min., has been a leader in teaching medical ethics and humanities to students from all six colleges since he joined the Department of Family Medicine in 1974. The Introduction to Clinical Ethics course, which is required for all second-year medical students, was developed by Mary Faith Marshall, Ph.D., in 1994 and is part of the doctoring curriculum at MUSC.  Current course directors, Webb, David Annibale, and Keller, have successfully recruited several ethics committee members to serve as small-group instructors for the course. Other health care ethics courses, seminars and lectures frequently take place across the MUSC campus, taught and supported by a variety of faculty.  A long overdue national focus on end-of-life care has generated much recent interest by health care organizations in ethics and palliative care. Gage notes that many of the ethics consults at the Medical Center revolve around end-of-life decision-making.  The Ethics Consult Service and ethics committee look forward to collaborating with the Medical Center's new Palliative Care Service in improving the quality of palliative care for MUSC patients. Anyone interested in learning more about the ethics committee may contact Webb at 792-2618 or e-mail  webbsa@musc.edu.    Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to petersnd@musc.edu or catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Community Press at 849-1778.