Defining and Refining Trauma-Informed Ethics Consultation.

AbstractThis article responds to Autumn Fiester's "TIEC, Trauma Capacity, and the Moral Priority of Surrogate Decision Makers in Futility Disputes," in which Fiester argues for a vision of trauma-informed ethics consultation that systematically prioritizes the preferences of surrogate decision makers in cases of disagreement between surrogates and clinical teams over continued life-sustaining therapies for severely neurologically impaired patients. We identify three issues arising from Fiester's article that allow us to clarify our account of trauma-informed ethics consultation on which she builds and that illustrate the need for further research on trauma-informed ethics consultation in both theory and practice. The first issue responds to her charge that ours was an overly "modest" proposal.