Ethics committees in health care institutions in the New York City metropolitan region: a report of two nursing surveys.

Two surveys were conducted independently to ascertain whether health care institutions in the New York City metropolitan region currently have ethics committees and to gather information related to their functioning and use by nurses. Comparable findings in the overlapping samples suggest that approximately one-third of surveyed institutions do not have interdisciplinary ethics committees. Where the committees do exist, they may not be adequate to address nurses' ethical concerns.