Consultation Services

Center faculty members provide consultation on a variety of ethical issues arising in clinical care and research. These ethics consultation services have been valuable as laboratories for teaching and conducting research on ethical quandaries in clinical practice and research.

Clinical Ethics

UPMC Presbyterian, Montefiore, Magee-Womens, and Shadyside Hospitals, as well as Western Psychiatric Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, provide ethics consultation services. These consultants include:

  • Joseph Bertino, PhD, Director of Ethics; and
  • Ariel Clatty, PhD, Ethics Consultant

Center faculty member Valerie Satkoske, PhD, is Vice President of Mission Effectiveness and Spiritual Care, UPMC Mercy Hospital, and is the head of UPMC system-wide ethics education and services.

Clinical ethics consultation services may be accessed by calling the hospitals’ operators and asking for “Medical Ethics On-Call.”

  • Children's Hospital: 412.692.5325
  • Montefiore, Presbyterian, and Western Psychiatric Hospitals: 412.647.2345
  • Shadyside Hospital: 412.623.2121

Center faculty and affiliated faculty serve on the ethics committees of these hospitals and consult with UPMC ethics consultants.

Research Ethics & Design

Center faculty members serve as research ethics consultants to the University’s Committee for Oversight of Research and Clinical Training Involving Decedents, Human Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee, Institute for Precision Medicine, Institutional Review Board/Human Research Protection Office, and many individual research programs and projects.

The Research, Ethics and Society Initiative of Pitt Research includes the Research Ethics Consultation Service (RECS) on which several Center faculty serve. A research ethics consultation may be requested by emailing RECS@pitt.edu.

CTSI

The mission of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) at the University of Pittsburgh is to improve the efficiency with which biomedical advances translate to improvements in the health of the community. Center faculty collaborate with CTSI investigators and provide consultation on the design and conduct of CTSI and other clinical studies.