Topics
Below is a list of workshop topics offered by PHEN. We are open to making presentations and facilitating workshop on other topics in health ethics. Please just contact us to discuss your ideas!
Introduction to Health Ethics
This workshop provides an overview of the field of ethics as it applies to health and health care. It is recommended for groups who have had no previous formal exposure to the subject area. Topics include the importance of considering ethical issues in the health setting and common approaches and principles used in addressing health ethics issues. Landmark legal cases which fueled the recent expansion of interest in health ethics are also considered. Specific approaches introduced include the four principles; duty, consequence, virtue and care-based ethics; as well as case-based ethics or casuistry.
Frameworks for Ethical Decision-Making
Engaging in discussions about ethical issues in health, especially in a group setting, can be both inspiring and frustrating. This workshop focuses on processes for ethical decision-making. It looks at systematic methods of examining difficult ethical questions and outlines their usefulness and disadvantages. Possible stumbling blocks to ethical discussions are identified, as are potential methods of resolution.
Health Ethics Committees
Ethics committees operating within health and health care organizations across the country have developed primarily to promote ethics education, provide consultation services, conduct policy review, or a combination of these. This workshop addresses the history and potential goals, functions, structures, processes, benefits and challenges of health ethics committees. Participants are provided the opportunity to study examples of ethics committee terms of reference, policies and case consultation processes. The workshop can be tailored to members of prospective or existing committees and the needs or interests of a particular committee.
The Ethics of Personal Directives
A personal directive or living will is designed to ensure that an individual's preferences and values regarding medical and personal care matters will be respected when they can no longer participate in decision-making. This module provides a basic overview of the history, function and nature of personal directives, explores the ethical underpinnings of the new Alberta Adult Guardianship and Trusteeship Act, and addresses several of the ethical issues to which personal directives may give rise.
Ethical Issues at the End of Life
Ethical issues arising at the end of life constitute some of the most distressing dilemmas that individuals, families, friends, and health care providers will face. Topics discussed in this workshop include capacity and incapacity, withholding and withdrawing treatment, concerns arising from the use of high dosage pain medications, and identifying appropriate goals of care. Optional topics include access to palliative care, demands for non-beneficial treatment, use of personal directives and living wills, resource allocation, providing nutrition and hydration, defining death, and euthanasia/assisted suicide.
Ethics and Health Resource Allocation
When
potential demand or need for health services exceeds available resources,
difficult allocation decisions must be made. The outcome of those decisions,
how they are made, and by whom, will be based, in some way or another,
on values. This workshop will lay bare some of the underlying values
and principles that can guide resource allocation decisions, as well as
the strengths and limitations of various allocation approaches. The workshop is designed specifically for health administrators, board members,
clinicians and others charged with the task of distributing limited resources
targeted at improving health.
Autonomy and Informed Consent
As an important expression of individual self-determination in health settings, informed consent is a complex ideal with a host of ethical implications important for health care providers to consider in clinical encounters. This workshop explores essential elements of informed consent in a treatment or care setting, including capacity, disclosure of information, and voluntariness. Also discussed are legal standards for obtaining valid consent, different types of consent, consent forms, and the challenges of ensuring valid consent in a pluralistic society.
Capacity for Adults and Children
The difficulty of determining decision-making capacity gives rise to errors at two extremes: the competent patient's ability to control health care decisions is denied; or an incapable patient is not protected from making a decision that is harmful or that is not an expression of their values. This workshop identifies the components of decision-making capacity in a clinical setting, ethical issues arising from capacity assessment, methods of maximizing decision-making capacity to impose the least restrictive intrusion on an individual's autonomy, and the process of surrogate decision-making for adults and minors.
Ethics in the Cross-Cultural Health Setting
This workshop explores the ethical implications of delivering health care in culturally diverse settings. The discussion is designed to help identify biases in our belief systems, culturally-based or otherwise, that affect the way we see others; explore the implications and challenges inherent in striving for equity in such situations; and to provide participants with tools to meaningfully engage those whose values are different from their own. While examined in the context of cultural diversity, the questions and approaches discussed will be relevant to any situation which involves engaging people of varying backgrounds and beliefs.
Organizational Ethics / Creating A Moral Climate in Health Organizations
Organizational ethics is a relatively new field that broadens the horizon of health ethics discussions to ask what it means to be an ethical organization. The assumption here is that there is more to being ethical in the health setting than treating patients and residents, care providers, families and research subjects in a compassionate and just way. This workshop provides facilitation for those organizations who wish to tackle broader questions of how to promote an enabling ethical environment; that is, one that encourages people to consider the well-being of others, and which rewards rather than frustrates attempts at genuine moral search and reflection.
Ethical Issues in Mental Health
Perhaps more than in most other fields of health, mental health care forces all those involved to address tensions between promoting well-being, protecting against harm, safeguarding personal autonomy and treating others fairly. This workshop addresses the intensely value-laden nature of some of the more salient issues in the field, including the social stigmatization of those with mental illness, commitment, confidentiality, competence, informed consent and boundary issues. The Alberta Mental Health Act is discussed with reference to specific ethical tensions it raises, and the rights, responsibilities and obligations of care providers and care recipients.
Ethical Issues in Home Care and Community Care
In recent years, there has been increased emphasis on providing care outside of the walls of traditional health care institutions. This shift has given prominence to a set of ethical issues quite distinct from those encountered in traditional health care settings. This workshop focuses on home care, and examines a number of ethical issues in providing and receiving care with severely limited resources, in relative isolation from other clients and providers and in a variety of physical environments. Emphasis is placed on the frequent requirement to balance the competing tensions of respect for client autonomy and promotion of their well-being.
Ethics and Physical Disability
The notion of physical disability, and disability in general, has meaning only in relation to what are generally labeled abilities. This workshop begins with an exploration of the value-laden nature of the distinction between the two. Ethical issues considered include those arising from the definition of disability; social, medical and hybrid constructs of disability; quality of life judgments; questions of fairness and justice in the allocation of health resources; determining benefit and harm in the face of advances in gene and reproductive technology; and accessibility in both health and social settings.
Ethics, Health Determinants and Global Health
Some would argue that there is a certain irony in the proliferation of discussions regarding how to ethically allocate the billions of dollars spent on health care in Canada, when: (1) resources allocated to health care have been shown to be only one of several important determinants of health, and (2) an unacceptable number of human beings, mostly in developing nations, are scarcely able to access even the most basic requirements of reasonable health, let alone advanced health services. This workshop is designed for those who wish to expand analysis of health resource allocation ethics to include consideration of these two larger questions, the compelling ethical conundrums to which they give rise, and the ways in which they frame more traditional questions of health ethics in a new light.
Introduction to Health Research Ethics
Conducting research with humans is a vital activity for the advancement of knowledge. It is also one which requires that great care be taken to ensure the protection of those enrolled as subjects. Workshop topics include the historical development of research ethics; international and national published guidelines; distinctions between research, treatment, and quality assurance; the nature of informed consent; and essential ethical principles to guide research including respect for persons, promotion of well-being, and justice or fair distribution of benefits and burdens. Particular emphasis will be placed on exploring the strengths and limitations of the prevailing Canadian 'guidelines', the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, 1998 and the new draft version (2009).