Background

In an ethics consultation, it is rarely a straightforward journey from request through to evaluation as there are many decisions made in the course of a single consult. This resource aims to capture that experience more accurately through the use of a Choose Your Own Adventure(™)-style branching framework. Although the choices presented in these cases reflect only a small subset of the possible outcomes, they nonetheless help to demonstrate why there are a range of answers in any given case to the question, “What should we do?”

With the help of ethicists and healthcare providers across Canada, we developed this interactive resource to help users (a) understand the ethics consultation process and (b) build confidence and capacity in ethics consultation.

For more information, see About the Project or About Us.

Getting Started

To get started, scroll down or use the menu bar on the top right to navigate through the website.

When you click on a case, you will be presented with a scenario that requires an ethics consultation. Using the interactive window, you will then be asked to make a series of choices as you think through various values, stakeholders, and policies that are relevant to the case. Each choice you make will be followed with feedback on the decision, so you can better understand how decisions in ethics consultations are justified.

In addition to various clinical and organizational ethics interactive cases, we have included Definitions and General Discussions of important ethical concepts for you to browse.

Statement of Disclosure

All of the cases presented on this resource are either completely fictionalized or composite cases that are grounded in and reflective of the reality of ethics support work. The cases were contributed by ethicists and healthcare providers across Canada for your professional development.