INTRODUCING CLINICAL ETHICS CONSULTATION SERVICE TO KING FAHAD MEDICAL CITY IN RIYADH KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA

As an integral part of medical ethics, it is important to have clinical ethics consultation services in our health care and hospitals. Such ethics consultations in health care settings are not a new idea with the first of such consultations dating back nearly 35 years to 1970. In the 1980s, a professional society devoted to ethics consultation was formed and the first books on the subject were published. There are few medical ethics specialists and only one bioethics department in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, ethics consultation services are not as organised as their counterparts in North America. Although many big hospitals in Saudi Arabia have medical ethics committees, these committees do not take care of clinical ethics consultation services. The goals of the present project is to start an ethics counsultation service through which we will introduce a good quality, fully integrated consultation ethics model.