Ethics committees in Canadian hospitals: report of the 1990 pilot study.

The second phase of a Canada-wide study of ethics committees in English-language hospitals in Canada involved site visits to five selected hospitals to assess the effectiveness of the ethics committee. In this article the findings of this pilot study are reported, including the perspectives of physicians, nurses and hospital administrators on the ethics committee of the various hospitals. The results of the study, albeit limited by being a pilot study, raise a series of questions for hospital administrators, medical administrators and nursing administrators.