The traditional trinity of hospital ethics committees comprise of an ethics consult service, policy development, and education. Many of these activities take place behind closed doors, prompting Frolic and colleagues to open this "black box" of ethics policy work of multidisciplinary hospital or healthcare ethics committees (HECs) (Frolic et al. 2012). The authors draw attention to the fact that there is very little empirical work or literature on the policy work of healthcare ethics committees, yet plenty of data exists on case consultations. Despite the fact that FIECs spend 23% of their time formulating or evaluating policy (McGee et al. 2001), we know relatively little about how this process unfolds at different medical institutions. Frolic and colleagues (2012) document real-time deliberations and subsequent changes and improvements to their developing policy review processes.
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