Interdisciplinary dynamics and generic conventions: the case of Clinical Ethics Committees

Abstract

In recent years, Clinical Ethics Committees (CECs) have become increasingly istitutionalised by way of a growing belief that they play an important role in successfully helping health care professionals to address ethical dilemmas. The majority of members have a medical or nursing background, with an increasing number of legal members, lay, and religious representation, and discuss a variety of issues that might arise in clinical settings, from Withholding and Withdrawing Treatment and Do Not Resuscitate Orders, to Advance Directives and Confidentiality, to name just a few. In this regard, the UK Clinical Ethics Network (UKCEN) was established in 2001 to provide support for the growing number of CECs and groups that were developing in National Health Service Trusts and some private hospitals in the UK. This study investigates the UKCEN’s newsletters (2004-2020) to explore the interdiscursive mechanism deployed in a written genre where traditionally distinct fields (medicine, ethics, law) become socially embedded and actualised in the larger external society, while addressing contextual, social, and institutional challenges and opportunities. From a comprehensive analysis of the newsletters written by the Board of Trustees as part of the annual report, it is evident the need to go beyond the textual data to consider intertextuality as well as interdiscursivity (Candlin/Maley 1997; Sarangi/Coulthard 2000; Prentice/ Barker 2017). Eventually, the socio-pragmatic aspects of the construction, interpretation, and use of newsletters not only becomes the interesting foci for the exploration of the interactive interdisciplinary process, but also reveals a ‘hidden agenda’ (Bhatia et. al 2008; Garzone 2012) realised through a conscious bending of the generic conventions to ‘promote’ corporate interests (Bhatia/Flowerdew/Jones 2008; Flowerdew 2014), rather than simply informing about the development of ethics support in the UK and the promotion of a high level of ethical debate in clinical practice.