Pertinent Roles and Experiences of All Authors

Abstract

Françoise Baylis, in 1990, was awarded a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada on “Health Care Ethics Consultation.” The Health Care Ethics Consultant (Humana Press) was published in 1994 upon completion of this project. The importance of character and virtue in ethics consultation is central to this work. A few years later, Baylis was named to the Society for Health and Human Values and the Society for Bioethics Consultation Task Force on Standards for Ethics Consultation. The Final Report of the U.S. Task Force, which revisited the issues of training, accreditation and certification, was published in the summer of 1998. In this Report the importance of character and virtue is contested. Throughout her career, Baylis has worked with a number of Ethics Committees in Canada and the United States. For a few years, she was a fulltime bioethicist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She now has a full-time academic appointment in the Medical School at Dalhousie University and most of her consulting with hospitals now focuses on policy issues rather than case consultations.