Are hospital ethics committees necessary?

In order to improve service quality, there are various committees in hospitals including ethics committees, which may be among the most important and necessary establishments within the health care system. Hospital ethics committees are designed to ensure proper clinical decision-making and are responsible for monitoring the ethical provision of services in hospitals. They also aim to assist patients and health care professionals without interfering in the physician-patient relationship. This article was part of a comprehensive review study performed in 2014 and 2015 by searching database not restricted to any particular period of time. The keywords used to search the sources available in English included “hospital ethics committee”, “healthcare ethics committee”, “clinical ethics committee”, and “institutional ethics committee”. Since ethical counseling is one of the main tasks of hospital ethics committees, their existence in hospitals appears to be essential. There have been few studies on the functions of hospital ethics committees in Iran, and it seems necessary to investigate the activities of these committees in the country. Moreover, it is recommended that the Ministry of Health and Medical Education take more serious actions to establish and monitor ethics committees in hospitals throughout the country.