Ethics

We support the Sinai Health community, including patients and our people, and address ethical challenges.

The Bioethics Department

Our team provides guidance and solutions to ethical challenges that arise in health-care and research settings.

Ethics Framework

We use the Sinai Health Ethics Framework to guide our practice to address the four main domains of bioethics.

Clinical:

Improve the quality of patient care
Identify and help to resolve ethical problems that arise during the care of an individual patient in hospital

Organizational:

Provide input and create organizational policies aligned to our values

Education:

Raise awareness and develop knowledge about ethical issues in health care
Train future ethicists

Research:

Lead research and scholarships on ethics-based questions
Publish work for academic and public audiences
Prepare grants
Collaborate with other institutions on bioethics research projects

Patients and families

The Bioethics Department at Sinai Health supports patients and caregivers in making difficult decisions about their or their family's health care.

These decisions may include questions about:

Managing end-of-life care
Being a substitute decision-maker
Making decisions that conflict with personal values
Handling disagreements between patients and their care team or family about a treatment plan
Any other medical decision that causes distress

We remain a confidential and neutral avenue of support.

How we help

When you contact the ethics department, we can support in a number of ways, including:

Talking about personal values and priorities
Digging into feeling of conflict on how to proceed with a proposed care plan
Using ethical principles such as:
- "Do no harm"
- The right of a patient to make their own decisions
- Making the best possible choice from a moral and ethical standpoint for yourself or a loved one
Attending and mediating meetings with a patient’s caregivers and care team
Helping to think about quality of life over quantity of life when considering medical assistance in dying (MAiD) or other end-of-life treatment options
Helping substitute decision makers figure out what to do when values and beliefs are different from the patient's

Sinai Health people

We support all members of the Sinai Health community, including physicians, scientists, learners, volunteers and the Board of Directors, by helping with ethical decisions regarding individual patients. We also develop policies, educate new health-care professionals and conduct bioethics research.

Sinai Health and the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics (JCB) have a 20-year history of collaboration. The Bioethics Department is an affiliated health organization of the JCB and the Sinai Health Bioethicists are active affiliates of the JCB’s Clinical, Organizational, and Research Ethics (CORE) Network.

Education and training opportunities

We offer several educational and training programs for students and physicians who are interested in pursuing bioethics.

Privacy and personal health information

We are committed to protecting your privacy and the privacy and confidentiality of your personal health information. Visit the Sinai Health privacy policy to learn more about the collection, use and protection of this information.