Table 1 Literature review on cognitive bias in clinical ethics supports

Blackstone et al. [51]

To provide a qualitative, retrospective look at the process of shared EDM for PWP

Three cases examples and 12 semi-structured interviews

Community of non-clinician volunteers from a hospital ethics committee

PWP: patients that require complex medical management and often end-of-life decisions in intensive care units

Current legislation does not address the case of PWPs, leading institutions to develop their own procedures for medical decisions about acutely ill PWPs. Committee members must be able to cope with the doubt and ambivalence that is inherent in the decisions they take. They have an incomplete picture of who the patient is, and what he or she would have wanted

Members reported comfort with the role, satisfaction with the thoroughness of discussions with the medical team, but also feelings of moral uncertainty. The degree of projection of committee member’ values onto patients raised the question of the experience and the practical protocol to provide quality in the EDM for this vulnerable patient population

Magelssen et al. [52]

To provide a classification of biases in case deliberation

Six kinds of bias are chosen and illustrated by examples

Clinical ethic consultants and committees

Individual clinicians appear to be much more prone to bias than clinical experts in committee. Possible remedies faced to the risk of bias are discussed

Albisser Schleger et al. [53]

To provide lessons from psychology research for avoiding bias in medical EDM

Examples of systematic inadequacy with group and individual decisions and their application to clinical ethic decision

All types of CES including clinicians and clinical ethicists

Interdisciplinary approach for a sensitization on systematic reasoning bias for enhancing the quality of EDM at bedside

Stanak, Hawlik [54]

To explore the shared EDM in the context of the limit of viability through when birth extremely preterm

A mixed methods approach with literature reviews following by six semi-structured interviews avaluating neonatologist’s communication strategies with parents

Physicians, ethical council, ethical committee

Parents of birth extremely preterm (before the completion of 28 weeks of pregnancy),

Three main ethical challenges: (i) social, cultural-religious, and legal contexts; (ii) uncertainty about the number of weeks of gestation; and (iii) difficult decisions about intensive or comfort care that are in the best interest of the infant and its parents, and address moral distress and professional virtues

The quality of communication strategies of choice options to parents may impact the parents’decision. Professional biases as parental understanding are implied

It is important to address the impact of communication in the shared EDM in the context of birth extremely preterm