Nancy Dubler’s Contributions to Clinical Ethics Consultation

In this issue of The Journal of Clinical Ethics, persons who knew bioethicist and lawyer Nancy Dubler celebrate her and the most important contributions she made to the practice of clinical ethics consultation (CEC). Her insights and the many discussions here include the unmet needs of prisoners, optimal approaches to bioethics mediation that prioritize the feelings of and relations between people, ethics consultants asking families of patients who can’t speak for themselves what the patient was like as a person before they discuss ethics, allocating resources consistently and fairly, learning CEC by role-playing in disempowered roles, distinguishing what is ethical from what is legal, increasing contributions from nonmedical people, increasing interconnections between health systems and the broader bioethics community, replacing oral feedings with tube feedings, fostering substitute decision makers whom patients most want, and appreciating root causes of patients’ and families’ mistrust. All these topics are likely to be optimal CEC practices, if not already implemented.