Credentialing Strategically Ambiguous and Heterogeneous Social Skills: The Emperor Without Clothes

• Published in: HEC forum Vol. 21; no. 3; pp. 293 - 306
• Main Author: Tristram Engelhardt, H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01-09-2009; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Bioethics; Consultants; Core competencies; Credentialing; Culture; Education; Ethics; Ethics, Clinical; Health administration; Health care industry; Humanism; Humanities; Humans; Medical education; Medical ethics; Medical Law; Medicine; Morality; Morals; Philosophy; Philosophy of Medicine; Professional ethics; Professionals; Social Behavior; Social skills; Society; Theologians; Theology; Theory of Medicine/Bioethics; Values; United States > US; Ethic Consultation; Clinical Ethicist; Reflective Equilibrium; Ethic Consultant; Health Care Institution
• ISSN: 0956-2737; 1572-8498
• DOI: 10.1007/s10730-009-9106-9

The paper reviews the various cultural forces that supported the emergence of clinical ethicists. It explores as well how a heterogeneous and protean cluster of services became bundled under the term clinical ethics. The paper argues that, although moral pluralism is real, there is a bundle of services associated with clinical ethics consultation. Credentialing will likely increase the chance that patients, their families, and physicians will be misled by the description of ethics consultants as ethics consultants, since so many of the services consultants provide are not strictly those of offering normative ethical guidance. Given these ambiguities, the interest of clinical ethics consultants in enhancing their own social, professional, and economic status will in some cases involve a conflict with the interests of patients, families, and practicing physicians.