About the HEC-C Program
The Healthcare Ethics Consultant-Certified (HEC-C) program is the first-ever certification program that identifies and assesses a national standard for the professional practice of clinical healthcare ethics consulting. Established by the HCEC Certification Commission, the HEC-C credential endorses your knowledge of key concepts in healthcare ethics and affirms your expertise, competence, and skillset. The HCEC Certification Commission is a body created and funded by the ASBH that has autonomous decision-making control over essential elements of the certification program.
The HEC-C program meets the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA) accreditation standards.
Who is eligible?
To be eligible for the HEC-C program and to sit for the exam, you will need:
- a minimum of a Bachelor's Degree; and
- 400 hours of healthcare ethics experience—related to the major domains of the content outline—within the previous 4 years.
Although all healthcare professionals engage in ethical decision making, healthcare ethics consultation is a distinct role. For purposes of HEC-C certification, healthcare ethics experience is defined as healthcare ethics consultation work, the vast majority of which is performed in the role of a designated healthcare ethics consultant, which is related to the major domain areas of the HEC-C examination content outline. Only active conduct of healthcare ethics consultation work is eligible. Hours spent learning or observing the work of a healthcare ethics consultant do not qualify.
Definition of Healthcare Ethics Consultation
Healthcare ethics consultation is a set of services provided by an individual or group in response to questions from patients, families, surrogates, healthcare professionals, or other involved parties who seek to resolve uncertainty or conflict regarding value-laden concerns that emerge in health care. Although all healthcare professionals engage in ethical decision making as part of their everyday practice (e.g., in facilitating informed consent with a patient or family before a procedure), healthcare ethics consultants differ from other healthcare professionals in that they have been assigned by their institutions the distinctive role of responding to specific ethical concerns and questions that arise in the delivery of health care, and therefore require a distinctive set of competencies to perform this role effectively. Healthcare ethics consultation is often performed in conjunction with other healthcare ethics activities, such as educating healthcare professionals, developing organizational policies, serving on organizational committees, and producing scholarly work. (ASBH, 2011)
Healthcare ethics consultations take place in a variety of settings including academic medical centers, ambulatory care facilities, behavioral health facilities, community hospitals, community hospitals affiliated with a medical school, government facilities, health systems, home care, hospice, and long-term care.
Potential roles include administrator, associate professor, assistant professor, clinical ethicist, consultant, department director, director, lecturer, medical director, professor, and researcher.