The Current Status of Clinical-Care Bioethics Committees in the City of Cartagena

Abstract

The relevance of this project is rooted in the enormous benefit the acquisition of fundamental knowledge for identification andassessment by bioethics committees has for health-care staff members with respect to their practice.The aim of this project is to discover the features of bioethics committees in the city of Cartagena in terms of their identity and howthey function. To do so, a descriptive, cross-sectional, retro prospective study was done using a semi-structured questionnaire as abasis for assessing the ethics and bioethics committees that operate at each health care institution of high and medium complexitythe city of Cartagena. The study demonstrated the existence and extent of the institutional support they receive. Their limitationsinclude, among others, a lack of education on the topic, recommendations on action plans, and case review. The conclusion is thatthe study is important because of the need for a theoretical reference on these committees that in turn will guide the creation ofothers and improve the conditions for those now operating at health-care institutions in Cartagena.