Mission
To advance human-centered health care through multidisciplinary collaboration and bioethics leadership, education, consultation, and scholarship.
Vision
We envision a healthcare system where every interaction honors the dignity, values, and voices of every individual. Connection and respect are integral to human-centered care, delivered with compassion, courage, and integrity.
Bioethics
What Is Bioethics?
Bioethics is a multidisciplinary field of study and practice that articulates and examines values and commitments underlying decisions made in the healthcare setting. Ethical issues may relate to life and death, cure and comfort, truth telling and trust, or any other circumstance central to patient care, research, and health professions education. The concerns of bioethics include the well-being and dignity of the patient; the preferences, values, rights, responsibilities, and choices of the patient, the people involved with the patient’s care, and the care team; matters of fairness and access to care; and the ethical conduct of clinical research.
Bioethics is about actions, behaviors, and ways of thinking that healthcare professionals exhibit routinely, whether they call them “bioethics.” For example, bioethics is relevant to actions that protect the confidentiality of patients’ medical information, ensure that patients are given the opportunity to complete advance directives, and create a care environment that promotes patient dignity and comfort.
What We Do
Recognizing that these matters are especially important to those who give and receive care, Hackensack Meridian Health provides team members, clinicians, patients, and those involved with the patient’s care access to bioethics guidance in making difficult decisions.
The members of the HMH Bioethics Institute provide clinical bioethics consultation, educate medical students, residents, and team members; host forums for discussion of ethical issues; collaborate with other disciplines; participate on medical center committees and projects; write and review policies; participate in the HMH Institutional Review Board, which is responsible for the responsible conduct of human subjects research; and provide leadership and education at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine.
Who We Are
HMH Bioethics Institute
The HMH Bioethics Institute is led by HMH’s Vice President, Bioethics. Three Directors, Bioethics lead clinical bioethics activities at each HMH hospital. The Director, AI Ethics and Quality provides expertise in AI ethics. All of these professional, full time bioethicists partner with others throughout HMH to lead and implement bioethics programs.
Bioethics Committees
Each hospital in the Hackensack Meridian Health network has a Bioethics Committee, which is a multidisciplinary group that includes a full-time bioethicist, physicians and advanced practice providers, nurses, social workers, patient experience advisors, chaplains, administrators, community members, and others.
The Bioethics Committee provides a forum for discussion about ethical issues that arise in healthcare and for education and policy review.
Bioethics Consultation
Consultation with Bioethics about ethical concerns related to the care of a patient at HMH is available to team members, clinicians, patients, and their loved ones (or those involved with the patient’s care).
There is no charge for these services.