Ethics Service

Sometimes decisions about children and young people’s health can be difficult, especially if there are dilemmas about the right decision to make. To support patients, families/carers and clinicians, we have a specialist clinical ethics service.

What is the Alder Hey Ethics Service?

The Alder Hey Ethics Service provides ethical support to clinicians, patients, and their families/carers. Ethics is about recognising different views and different choices. Views might be from the child/young person, from families/carers or from clinicians.

The Ethics Service does not make any decisions; our aim is to help all those involved in thinking about different choices where there might be disagreements or uncertainty.

The Ethics Service provides a forum when a decision or dilemma would benefit from wider ethical discussion with everyone involved.

Referrals to the Ethics Service are encouraged when there is a decision that presents an ethical dilemma, disagreement or it is just difficult to know what the best course of action might be.

Introducing the Alder Hey Ethics Service

The Alder Hey Ethics Service is led by two Co-Chairs with both experience and expertise in clinical ethics, Rachael Pennington (Associate Chief Nurse for Surgery) and Dr Ed Horowicz (Senior Lecturer in Healthcare Law and Bioethics, University of Liverpool).

A key part of the Ethics service is the Clinical Ethics Committee, where cases are discussed. The committee is made up of the Ethics Service Chairs, clinicians and practitioners from different professions in the hospital and an independent practicing lawyer, who all have specialist ethics experience. Everyone is invited so that the committee can hear the different views and concerns. After a discussion everyone receives a summary explaining the ethical issues and sometimes recommendations.

Factors considered usually include: