Adam MacDiarmaid-Gordon, Clinical Member of the Clinical Ethics Group, Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, Brighton Adam MacDiarmaid-Gordon is a Consultant in Renal and General (Internal) Medicine based at the Sussex Kidney Unit in Brighton. He took up that post in 1999, having qualified from Liverpool in 1984 and then filling training in posts in the North West and Midlands. He has been a member of the Brighton Clinical Ethics Group since its inception. His other main interest beyond his clinical work is medical education, in which he is actively involved. He is married with one daughter. Laura Strumidlo, Clinical Member of the Clinical Ethics Committee, Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham Laura Strumidlo is a clinical member and Vice Chair of the Heart of England Clinical Ethics Committee in Birmingham. She is currently a Professional Development Sister in Critical Care, providing and facilitating educa- tion opportunities to all nursing staff in this area. She has been a registered nurse for 17 years, specializing in critical care for the past 10 years. She completed her MSc in Health Care Ethics at Birmingham University in 2003. She has two toddlers. Bea Teuten, Member of the Clinical Ethics Committee, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust, London Bea Teuten currently works as a Mediator at Great Ormond Street Hospital, where she set up Patient Advice and Liaison Services in 2002. A solicitor by training, she took a Masters in Medical Law and Ethics at King’s College London, after having set up and chaired a medical charity from 1989. Her interest in ethics stems largely from her experience of caring for her daughter, who at one time had no fewer than seven consultants! She lives in London with her husband, four teenage children and two dogs. Eleanor Updale, Lay Member of the Clinical Ethics Committee, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust, London Eleanor Updale is a lay member and past Vice Chair of the Clinical Ethics Committee at Great Ormond Street Clinical Ethics 2006; 1: 11–17 Ethical decisions in clinical practice occur whenever and wherever health care takes place: they are not the pre- serve of big teaching hospitals, or even hospitals at all. Ethical issues are arguably not even confined to the inter- actions of health care professionals and patients (or their families). Informal carers, relatives and friends providing care at home also make ethical decisions. Clinical ethics committees have, nonetheless, tended to be established in hospitals, and their caseloads reflect the kind of envi- ronment in which they are placed. General hospital ethics committees see a wide variety of cases; children’s hospitals deal with issues relevant to paediatric care but again may see a wide variety of cases; clinical ethics com- mittees in assisted conception units see only cases related to assisted conception. As yet only a small number of people have the expe- rience of serving on such committees, but as the number of committees grow more members will be needed. Clinical Ethics thought that it would be interesting for its readers to experience a range of cases of the type pre- sented to existing committees and observe the sort of dis- cussion they elicit, so we have set up this virtual ethics committee, which will be asked to comment on one case per issue. We decided that members should be asked to serve for one year (four issues) and that in this, our first year, we would ask our committee to consider the kind of cases that might come before a committee based in a gen- eral hospital. The committee members Heather Draper, Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Ethics, University of Birmingham Heather Draper is Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Ethics, Centre for Biomedical Ethics, Department of Primary Care and General Practice, University of Birmingham. She is a member of clinical ethics committees at the Assisted Conception Unit, Birmingham Women’s Hospital, Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Heartlands & Solihull Hospitals. Her primary research interest lies with ethics and reproduction, particularly the concepts of ‘mother’ and ‘father’ and how the increased use of paternity testing is threatening the lat- ter. She teaches health care ethics and law to medical students and postgraduates. C ASE S TUDIES Virtual ethics committee, case 1: should our hospital have a policy of telling patients about near misses? Heather Draper*, Adam MacDiarmaid-Gordon, Laura Strumidlo, Bea Teuten and Eleanor Updale *Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Ethics, Centre for Biomedical Ethics, Department of Primary Care and General Practice, University of Birmingham Email: h.j.a.draper@bham.ac.uk CE06.04 21/2/06 20:08 Page 1