Margaret “Gretchen” Schwarze, MD, MPP, FACS
Chair of Hospital Clinical Ethics Committee
Professor of Vascular Surgery and of Medical History and Bioethics
Karola Kreitmair, PhD, MSc, HEC-C
Co-Chair of Hospital Clinical Ethics Committee
Associate Professor of Medical History and Bioethics, Affiliate Professor of Philosophy
How to request an ethics consultation:
Call UW Paging at (608) 262-02122 and ask for “Ethics”.
This service is available 24/7/365.
The Department of Medical History and Bioethics oversees and coordinates the UW Health Clinical Ethics Consultation Service. Anyone involved in a patient’s care may request a consultation—physicians, nurses, allied health care professionals, staff, patients or families/friends. Ethics consultations usually involve a situation where patient care is impacted by conflicts in values between and/or among patients, families, and treatment providers. Examples of issues have included questions about whether to stop aggressive end-of-life treatments, uncertainty about who can best serve as a surrogate decisionmaker for a patient who is unconscious or not “in their right mind”, questions about how to weigh an incompetent patient’s refusal of life-prolonging care, issues around how to navigate preferences that are based on religious or cultural beliefs, the extent to which non-medical circumstances should impact decisions around listing a patient for organ transplantation, disagreements around brain death determinations, and concerns around patient safety with discharge planning. Ethics consultations consist of a process in which facts and values are gathered from relevant persons, these are elucidated in a multidisciplinary setting, and clear recommendations for pursuing ethically appropriate patient care are provided. Ethics consultations are led by clinical ethicists trained in medical ethics theory and consultation management.