Institutional Ethical Code Formulation and Ethical Committee Setup

Abstract

 The principle of medical ethics is to protect human dignity and respect human rights. Every healthcare worker, who is involved in human healthcare and research targeting humans, is desired to behave with high ethical standards. From this point of view, most medical institutions carry out daily practices according to determined basic principles and action goals. However, it is practicing only with the principle is insufficient. Every institution should be required to formulate a written code of ethics and establish a deliberating system to evaluate whether ethical consideration is performed.

 Our clinic was pointed out deficiencies in the written ethical code and the concrete behavioral goal through onsite examination of the excellent facility update approval committee of the Japan Society of Health Evaluation and Promotion. They also requested to submit an improvement report on these deficiencies. According to this deliberative examination, we immediately acted to formulate an institutional ethical code and to set up an ethical committee as the clinic attached to the health check division.

 In this article, we introduce how to proceed with the establishment of these ethical activities and emphasize the importance of third-party examinations of healthcare facilities with the aim of obtaining an excellent evaluation.