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12 HEC F. 1 (2000)

handle is hein.journals/hecforum12 and id is 1 raw text is: HE C FORUM                                © 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
2000; 12(1):1-3.                                 Printed in the Netherlands.
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
A MODEL FOR THE NEXT GENERATION
HEALTHCARE ETHICS COMMITTEE
DAVID C. BLAKE, Ph.D., J.D.
A model for the next generation healthcare ethics committee (HEC) is
presented and analyzed in the following pages. The Model is associated with the
St. Joseph Health System (SJHS) because of its point of origin, but the Model
could have been developed in any healthcare system with that system's own
characteristics evidenced in the Model.
There are three parts to this presentation and analysis. The first consists
of articles by Judith Wilson Ross and me offering commentaries on the thinking
(and passion) that lead to attempting the Model and that undergirds its
components. The second is the Model itself, presented in its final form as a
written document. And the third part consists of articles by Neil S. Wenger,
Bruce E. Zawacki, Janis Rueping, and Daniel O. Dugan that both recommend
and criticize the Model.
Judith Wilson Ross sets up our presentation of the Model by offering her
own conclusions about HECs based on more than fifteen years of extensive and
intimate experience with HECs. As many readers know, Ross has been both a
leading authority on HECs and one of their most consistent defenders and
supporters. Her involvement in triggering the Model and in the development of
the details of its components means that the Model is not some off-handed
conclusion about HECs from individuals late to the field. Her article on the
mission of HECs may, in effect, be read as a manifesto on HECs from one of
their founders.
In my commentary, I attempt to provide a general outline of the
discussions, debates, worries, and concerns that accompanied the Model's
development. My ambition is to indicate how the Model was not created as an
argument-piece to be offered in an ongoing scholarly debate, with sufficient
philosophical and theoretical justification. Rather, the Model was developed in
response to a (felt) pressing need within one organization (but reinforced by
experiences elsewhere) to turn things around regarding the functioning and

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