Insufficient evidence to know whether formal ethical involvement in case management is effective
Citation: Schildmann J, Nadolny S, Haltaufderheide J, et al. Ethical case interventions for adult patients. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2019, Issue 7. Art. No.: CD012636.
What is this? Formal ethical processes in clinical care is important for decisions about triage and management of limited resources, both for patients with COVID-19 and those with other conditions who are suffering because of the diversion of resources to COVID-19.
In this Cochrane review, the authors searched for studies which compared formal involvement by an ethicist or ethical committee in clinical case management, compared with usual care or an active control. They did not restrict their searches by language of publication and did the search in September 2018. They included 4 randomised trials (total: 1165 participants) from USA (3) and Taiwan (1). The included studies were at moderate-high risk of bias and the evidence of very low quality, hence the evidence of any effect is uncertain.
What works: Nothing noted
What doesn’t work: Nothing noted.
What’s uncertain: It was not possible to ascertain the effectiveness of ethical case interventions due to the very low certainty of the evidence of the included studies.