Ethics

At Southlake Regional Health Centre,ethics includes the study of various processes for deciding the best course of action when presented with difficult moral or values-based choices.

Vision
Ethics Symbol
The Ethics Committee
Making End of Life Decisions

Vision

Ethical reflection permeates every decision made at Southlake Regional Health Centre.

Ethics Symbol

The ethics symbol was developed by the Hospital’s Ethics Committee. It represents the balancing of differing values that occur in human relationships, especially when decisions of an ethical nature must be made. The symbol is used on various printed materials that have been developed and/or approved by Southlake’s Ethics Committee.

The Ethics Committee

The Ethics Committee is a team made up of professionals representing a wide range of health care disciplines. Its role is to work with staff, physicians, patients and families to support ethical decision-making throughout the hospital.

The Committee contributes to quality patient care by providing:

• confidential consultation and support to patients, families and health care providers when facing difficult ethical issues in patient care.
• education to enhance staff's awareness and understanding of ethical issues in health care.
• policy guidelines and suggestions in areas of ethical concern.
• debriefs with staff to review recent patient care issues for educational purposes and to reflect on the ethical decisions made.

What Ethical issues can the Committee help with?

• patient capacity and consent
• substitute/proxy decision-making
• end of life care/advance directives/resuscitation choices
• difficult treatment decisions/patient/family/staff conflicts
• resource allocation
• research ethics
• other care delivery issues involving value choices

Confidentiality

• Committee members are bound by hospital policy and will use appropriate means to preserve confidentiality.
• All records of consultation are kept strictly confidential.

Requests for consultation or education
Requests can be made by patients, families and members of the health care team:

• During regular business hours, urgent requests can be made by paging the Committee Chair through Locating or by calling (905) 895-4521, extension 2216. For non-urgent requests, a message may be left in the Committee's confidential voice mailbox at extension 6795.
  During non-business hours, call extension 2216 (Locating) and ask them to page the Administrator-on-call, who will review the request and notify the Ethics Committee as needed.

Once a request has been received, a member of the Committee will contact the individual to discuss their concern and to help plan a course of action.

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Making End of Life Decisions

Who Decides? You do…
It is best to make your wishes known to your partner or loved ones before the stress of an illness or hospitalization occurs. However, if you become ill, you are the decision-maker with the support of your family and the health care team.

If you become unable to express your health care wishes an Advance Directive can communicate on your behalf. An Advance Directive can take two forms, an explanation of your wishes written on paper, or a proxy directive, which explains who will convey your wishes to the health care team.

Plan for End of Life Care
Now may be the time to discuss your end of life care plan with your loved ones and health care team.

These are tough conversations that take incredible courage. Let your caregivers support you. Discuss your wishes with your family and health care team in the event that a decision needs to be made pertaining to your end of life care.

What is CPR?
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is an emergency procedure that is done when a person stops breathing or their heart stops beating. It includes mouth-to-mouth breathing (artificial respiration) and chest compressions to manually restart heart pumping from outside of the body (artificial circulation).

In the hospital, CPR may lead to other treatments, such as medication or electric shock (defibrillation) to restart the heart, and tubes or machines (intubation) to help a person breathe. If successful, CPR restores both breathing and heartbeat.

Does CPR Work?
CPR was intended for use in emergency situations to treat sudden, unexpected death in otherwise healthy people due to heart attack or drowning.

CPR was not intended for people who are terminally ill, who have very complex diseases or those with progressive degenerative diseases. There is little evidence that CPR will benefit these people.

Talk with your family and health care team about your feelings toward CPR. Ask your health care team about your condition and whether CPR would be a suitable treatment for you.

Make your wishes known
A "No CPR" order means that if no signs of life are present, nature is allowed to take its course and no medical intervention is made in an effort to prolong the person's life.

Should you request a "No CPR" order, full medical, nursing and supportive care will continue during your stay to ensure you are kept comfortable and without pain or symptoms. In addition, necessary lab work and tests may continue to be done to monitor and determine whether or not there are any further treatment needs and/or options.

If further treatment options become available you can always change your mind or cancel the "No CPR" order at any time.

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