Peer Review, Peer Education, and Modeling in the Practice of Clinical Ethics Consultation: The Zadeh Project

Mark J. Bliton, Ph.D., is the Director of Medical Bioethics at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA. He serves as a member of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Regional Committee on Bioethics as well as the Co-chair for the Los Angeles Medical Center Committee on Bioethics. In his capacity as Director of Medical Bioethics, he organizes and leads ongoing clinical ethics education for staff and provides individual clinical ethics consultations. He plays an ongoing role in leadership for Los Angeles Medical Center's innovative Beneficial Care program (which he helped conceptualize, design, and implement). Bliton spent the first 20 years of his career at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN, as a faculty member in the Center for Clinical and Research Ethics and one of VUMC's Clinical Ethics Consultants; he also held academic appointments in the Department of Medicine (School of Medicine), the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology (School of Medicine), and the Department of Philosophy (College of Arts & Sciences). His work is premised on the crucial need to pay careful attention to the actual details and moral experiences associated with clinical interactions and decision making. With that as a fundamental orientation, the focus of his academic work has been primarily directed toward the experience of responsibility in clinical ethics consultation and the diversity among methods for ethics consultation practice. He also has spent considerable time exploring ethical issues at the frontlines of the dynamic and rapidly changing environments of health care, including especially the ethical and social values expressed in innovative approaches in surgery, for example, maternal-fetal surgery for spina bifida and deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease.