Ethics

Catholic health care seeks to carry out the healing ministry of Jesus in a complex environment — a fragmented health care system, millions of Americans uninsured or underinsured, enormous competition, challenges in reimbursement, proliferating technologies, and numerous biomedical and scientific advances. These and other forces often generate difficult questions about how to live out our faith and value commitments in concrete situations. Reflecting on what we ought to do and who we ought to become, as individuals and as organizations, whether in the clinical, business, or social realms, is the work of ethics.

The ethics function at Saint Thomas Health seeks to provide assistance to our physicians, staff, patients and families in navigating the many complex ethical realities in health care today. We do this through individual consultations, presentations, conducting monthly Ethics Committee meetings, collaborating with our colleagues, developing and sharing resources, and offering educational programs to internal audiences and throughout the community.

Ethics at Baptist Hospital
Becket Gremmels - Director of Ethics
Office: 284-3445

Ethics at Saint Thomas Hospital
Kate Payne - Director of Ethics
Office: 222-6449

Ethics at Middle Tennessee Medical Center
Jeff Fryer - Director of Pastoral Care
Office: 396-4108
Timm Glover - VP of Mission
Office: 396-4601

Reasons You Might Want an Ethics Consult Include:

• Help with advance directives such as living wills or durable powers of attorney for health care.  For information about advance directives, click here.
• Conflict about what to do for a loved one
• Making difficult decisions near the end of life 
• Conflict about who should make decisions for a patient who is not able to do so

Things to Know About Ethics Consults
Ethics consults provide help, advice, support, education or discernment about difficult decisions related to medical care.

Anyone (physician, associate, patient or family member) may request a consult by calling one of the above numbers or asking to have the ethics person on call paged. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The name of the caller is kept confidential.

The ethics consultant will talk to the physicians, nurses, other caregivers, patients, family members and review the chart as appropriate in an effort to determine what's going on in the case and help resolve the problem.