Healthcare is complex, and sometimes, patients, families, and healthcare providers face challenging situations in which the right next step is not clear. These situations can include:
- Do-not-resuscitate orders
- Initiation/continuation/withdrawal of life support, nutrition, and hydration
- Conflict between religious values and treatment plans
- Determining who has the right to make decisions
- Conflict between family members about a treatment plan
The Cheshire Medical Center Ethics Committee provides free ethics consultations to hospital and clinic patients, their families, and our staff. The committee includes doctors, nurses, social workers, community members, and staff from spiritual health and patient relations.
Ethics consultants do not make medical or patient care decisions. Instead, they focus on helping patients, families, and care providers understand the range of reasonable options open to them. Sometimes, they can help with a simple phone call. In other cases, a more formal ethics consultation is needed.
Ethics consultations are not appropriate for all situations. If you have a question about a financial, legal, or quality of care issue, contact a Patient Relations Representative by calling 603-354-6577.
Request an ethics consultation
Ethics consultants are on call from 8 am to 4 pm, Monday to Friday, excluding holidays. To request an ethics consultation, you can ask a member of the patient’s care team to reach out for you, or you can call the hospital operator at 603-354-5400 to ask that an ethics consultant be paged. Calls received after hours and on weekends will be directed to the ethics consultant on call the next available business day.