In this time of unprecedented healthcare challenges due to COVID-19 and systemic racism and health disparities, SGIM members may face significant ethical challenges in their practice. The SGIM Ethics Committee supports the mission of SGIM, in part, by promoting the ethical practice of general internal medicine, addressing ethical issues in clinical practice, research and health policy, and relieving moral distress caused by conflicts about such issues.

We wanted to inform SGIM members of our existing initiative, “Ask an Ethicist.” This service allows SGIM members to ask any questions about a wide variety of ethical challenges they face in their roles as clinician, researchers, educators, and advocates, and get answers from ethical experts on the SGIM Ethics Committee.

We have created a link on our committee page that allows SGIM members to “Ask an Ethicist” questions they would like us to consider: https://www.sgim.org/communities/other-sgim-committees/ethics/ask-an-ethicist. Through this link, we hope to provide support to members who either do not have access to an ethics consultant or would prefer not to consult their local ethicist.

We welcome inquiries about clinical, professional, or institutional concerns. Since questions will be handled by volunteers, we are not able to address urgent or emergent questions. Please do not disclose PHI in any messages; we are not using a secure messaging service. We hope that the “Ask an Ethicist” service will allow our committee both to help individual members and to learn about the kinds of ethical issues our members and SGIM are confronting.

Please send your inquiry to the Ethics Committee Chair, Elizabeth Dzeng, MD, MPH, PhD, at liz.dzeng@ucsf.edu.