Clinical Ethics Committees (CECs), as distinct from Research Ethics Committees, were originally established with the aim of supporting healthcare professionals in managing controversial clinical ethical issues. However, it is still unclear whether they manage to accomplish this task and what is their impact on clinical practice. This systematic review aims to collect available assessments of CECs’ performance as reported in literature, in order to evaluate CECs’ effectiveness. We retrieved all literature published up to November 2019 in six databases (PubMed, Ovid MEDLINE, Scopus, Philosopher’s Index, Embase and Web of Science), following PRISMA guidelines. We included only articles specifically addressing CECs and providing any form of CECs performance assessment. Twenty-nine articles were included. Ethics consultation was the most evaluated of CECs’ functions. We did not find standardized tools for measuring CECs’ efficacy, but 33% of studies considered “user satisfaction” as an indicator, with 94% of them reporting an average positive perception of CECs’ impact. Changes in patient treatment and a decrease of moral distress in health personnel were reported as additional outcomes of ethics consultation. The highly diverse ways by which CECs carry out their activities make CECs’ evaluation difficult. The adoption of shared criteria would be desirable to provide a reliable answer to the question about their effectiveness. Nonetheless, in general both users and providers consider CECs as helpful, relevant to their work, able to improve the quality of care. Their main function is ethics consultation, while less attention seems to be devoted to bioethics education and policy formation.

临床伦理委员会 (CEC) 与研究伦理委员会不同，其最初成立的目的是支持医疗保健专业人员管理有争议的临床伦理问题。然而，目前尚不清楚他们是否能够完成这项任务，以及他们对临床实践的影响。本系统评价旨在收集文献中报告的 CEC 绩效的可用评估，以评估 CEC 的有效性。我们按照 PRISMA 指南检索了截至 2019 年 11 月在六个数据库（PubMed、Ovid MEDLINE、Scopus、Philosopher's Index、Embase 和 Web of Science）中发表的所有文献。我们只收录了专门针对 CEC 并提供任何形式的 CEC 绩效评估的文章。收录了 29 篇文章。伦理咨询是对 CEC 职能评价最高的。我们没有找到衡量 CEC 效力的标准化工具，但 33% 的研究将“用户满意度”视为一项指标，其中 94% 的研究报告了对 CEC 影响的平均积极看法。患者治疗的变化和卫生人员道德压力的减少被报告为伦理咨询的额外结果。CEC 开展活动的方式多种多样，这使 CEC 的评估变得困难。最好采用共享标准，以便为有关其有效性的问题提供可靠的答案。尽管如此，一般来说，用户和提供者都认为 CEC 很有帮助，与他们的工作相关，能够提高护理质量。他们的主要职能是伦理咨询，