Activity Ideas

Included here are several ideas for Health Ethics Week activities, many of which can be easily modified to be applicable to your organization. If you would like more information about any of these activity ideas, or have new ideas of your own and need help developing them, please feel free to contact PHEN or any of our supporting organizations. We will be glad to help make your activity a success!

Remember that one of the goals is to increase the level of ethics awareness in your organization. Therefore, each discussion should be geared towards understanding the ethical issues surrounding the topic. For example, you might discuss exactly how understanding what it is like to be a patient or resident will increase respect for patients' autonomy, or how understanding power differentials among staff will enhance teamwork and effective ethical decision-making.

Presentations

• Invite an ethicist to speak on a particular health ethics topic or a current ethics issue in the news. Conclude with a question and answer period
• Invite other professionals such as clergy, health care representatives or community representatives to speak about their experience with health care ethics
• Have a panel session with a health care professional, a patient or patient family member, and someone with an ethics background to discuss a particular health ethics issue
• Host an entertaining debate between members of your group or organization on a relevant ethics issue in your field
• Invite a few budding actors from your organization to present a short play or re-enactment of someone facing an ethics issue. Debrief with a skilled ethics facilitator

Discussion Groups

• Use Health Ethics Week to initiate regular forums for staff to discuss their frustrations or difficulties dealing with ethics issues and to share coping strategies and resolution ideas
• Beginning during Health Ethics Week, hold regular Ethics Video Sessions in which participants can view a movie or television show on an ethics topic. Host a discussion session following the video
• Use Health Ethics Week to initiate a regular article discussion group in which participants read a journal or news article on an ethics topic and meet to discuss it
• Discuss how staff view members view the patients' experience. Discuss how do they compare/ contrast with each other and why
• Sponsor a joint meeting of representatives from your institutional or regional ethics committee, staff and community to discuss one another's needs, perspectives, and potential for cooperative action around an ethics issue
• Use Health Ethics Week to launch regular forums for staff to discuss a particular ethics issue. (Please refer to the section Topic Ideas for a comprehensive list of topics.)

Organization-Wide Activities

• Develop an easy-to-read summary of a relevant organizational or regional policy that has significant ethics content. Make the summary available to all staff
• Distribute an information sheet to staff updating them on important administrative and policy changes or issues that have significant ethical implications
• Conduct a survey of staff to assess awareness of the ethics committee and/or a pressing health ethics issue
• Invite experts to lead a workshop on conflict resolution, communication and group dynamics
• Have a staff meeting to discuss the values of your organization. Are these values being respected and promoted?
• Develop and launch during Health Ethics Week a more extensive ethics component in your orientation program for new staff and volunteers.

Community-Wide Activities

• Write a column for your organization's newsletter informing the community about a relevant ethics issue.
• Facilitate an event whereby staff and community members are given the opportunity to put themselves in the shoes of those who are affected by ethical dilemmas, with the aim of allowing them to empathize with/better understand and appreciate the perspectives of these individuals.
• Develop a brochure for patients and families about how treatment decisions are made, or that lists other important organizational policies or issues with significant ethical implications.
• Survey the community and/ or staff about their experiences with the organization, whether they felt they faced an ethics issue or knew of resources available to support them in decision-making.
• Create wallet-sized cards with basic information about personal directives and a phone number for additional information, then set up a display table to distribute and inform staff and clients about these.
• Interview patients and families about their experience with the organization. What is the experience like for them and how can it be improved?

Activities for Clinical Ethics Committees

• Have each member of the committee organize a meeting in his or her respective department on an ethics issue specific to the members of that department.
• Meet with facility department heads during Health Ethics Week and ask them to advise the committee on the ethical issues that frequently arise in their departments.
• Invite members of another local ethics committee to discuss mutual goals, problems, and concerns.
• Invite members of another local ethics committee to help evaluate your ethics committee meetings.
• Take time during Health Ethics Week to do a self-evaluation in which members evaluate their own contributions to the ethics committee and reflect on or discuss their hopes for its future.
• Establish an annual calendar and assign a different member of the ethics committee each month or at various times during the year to discuss an article, a case study, and so on.
• Develop and launch during Health Ethics Week a formal orientation program for new committee members.
• Join together with other ethics committees in your region to develop a formal education program for all (new) ethics committee members.
• Have each committee member reflect on what he or she thinks are the most pressing ethical issues facing the organization or region. Share these with all members at a meeting and decide which, if any, of these issues the ethics committee should address in the coming year
• Have a brainstorming session to think about whether there are ethics-related policies or guidelines that the committee should be developing or reviewing.
• Revisit the role of your ethics committee in your organization or region. What does your committee want its role to be? What do the administration and staff want the committee to be? Representatives from these groups could have an informal brown bag lunch and discuss options.
• Ask patients or families who previously consulted the ethics committee to meet with the committee to discuss how the experience could have been more helpful.
• Explore the ethical issues faced by the board and/or senior management. How does the committee's work relate to that of the board and management? Do members of the committee see themselves as isolated or as integral parts of the organization?
• Perform an audit of policies that have been developed/ reviewed by the committee. Discuss whether people know about them and if they are being followed.
• Develop and launch a brochure for patients and families about the ethics committee's role in the institution. Make this brochure available as you host an information session for the general public.
• Develop a brochure for patients and families about their rights and responsibilities in decision-making about treatments and/or other important ethical issues in the institution.
• Develop an effective half-hour educational program on health ethics and the role of the ethics committee and present it to various departments during Health Ethics Week
• Arrange for a local television news station or newspaper to interview two members of your ethics committee about its role within the organization.
• Develop a bulletin board in the lobby of your facility that features photos of the ethics committee members and contains contact information.
• Offer to provide speakers for local community organizations. Topics might include helping the community to understand ethics issues or the role of ethics committees in area health care facilities.
• Stock and regularly update a centrally located bulletin board with articles and announcements regarding health ethics.
• Summarize important articles in the ethics literature for distribution to staff.

Activities for Research Ethics Boards (REBs)

• Invite a health law specialist and a research ethicist to talk about the implications of Alberta's Health Information Act for REBs.
• Invite a representative from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) or the National Council on Ethics in Human Research (NCEHR) to discuss current issues for Canadian REBs.
• Host a forum to review and discuss the main ethical principles that underlie the Tri-Council Policy Statement. Discuss the strengths and limitations of the Statement. Particular topics may include how the policy statement addresses or does not address:
  • the special considerations of qualitative research
  • research with vulnerable populations and the incapacitated
  • research with collectivities and native communities
  • research on human tissue, embryos or fetuses
• Host a session on special considerations in the ethics review of complementary and alternative therapies research.
• Have each member of the committee organize a meeting in his or her respective department or discipline on a research ethics concern specific to members of that department or discipline.
• Invite members of another REB to discuss mutual goals, problems and concerns.
• Invite members of another REB to help evaluate the institution's REB meetings.
• Take time during Health Ethics Week to do a self-evaluation in which members evaluate their own contributions to the board and reflect on or discuss their goals for its future.
• Develop and launch during Health Ethics Week a formal orientation program for new board members.
• Have each board member reflect on what he or she thinks are the most pressing current ethics issues in human subject research. Share these with all the members at a meeting and decide which, if any, of these issues the board should address.
• Develop a brochure for researchers and potential research participants about what it means to promote subjects' well-being, protect them from harm, or ensure they are treated fairly.
• Develop a half hour education program on research ethics and the role of an REB for the purpose of presenting it to various audiences.
• Write a column for your organization's newsletter informing the community about new policies, new court cases, or controversial topics in research ethics and how the board is addressing them.
• Summarize important articles in the ethics literature for distribution to researchers.

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