The Center for Ethics and Advocacy in Healthcare
Programmatic Initiatives in Applied Ethics 2008-2009

1. Feeding Tube Insertion / Withdrawal: What are the issues in an emergency situation?
2. The Right to Self-Determination as this is impacting the changing face of suicide in all communities
3. Community Training: assistance for community groups, churches, individuals with end of life decisionmaking
4. Developing a medical care plan for parents when adult children live remotely
5. How to Listen, How to Hear: My Physician and Me
6. Healthcare Decisionmaking as One Approaches the End of Life: A Discussion of personal values and making decisions regarding medical intervention

Objectives:

a. Determine impact on quality of life
b. Identify how to obtain needed information to make informed decisions

7. Character Development in Illness

Character Development in Illness seminars focus on the opportunities that occur during illness. The seminar assists individuals in naming the values that shape their lives, understanding that illness offers an opportunity for us to re-examine our values. Ultimately some values are affirmed while others are replaced by higher priorities.

8. Community Healthcare Ethics Training Program

Community Healthcare Ethics Training Program sessions are focused educational seminars offered to interfaith groups. The goal is to educate community groups to be of service in their own neighborhoods. People will bring assistance to individuals and families struggling over such issues as:

a. When is a person justified in a desire to die before medicine says they are?
b. How do we bring “all players” into the decision process (identify “the players”) while keeping the patient at the center, allowing the patient to make choices consistent with THEIR value system?

9. Individual and Family Ethics Case Consultation

We are available for individual and family ethics consultation by phone and in person. While the range of issues that can be addressed are endless, examples of possible topics for consultation include issues dealing with a current episode of illness, treatment options, decisions to forego treatment, etc.

10. Nursing Ethics

The profession of nursing has been called “a sleeping giant.” The moral task for nurses doesn’t simply revolve around patient care. The ethical challenges within a given healthcare setting include relationships with other healthcare providers. Striking a balance in these varied relationships often presents added challenges. Due to systemic injustice and gender bias, stories of abuse abound. Stories of heroism and courage within nursing are impressive. As this profession and those within it come to a sense of their new identity, the goal of partnership in the healing professions will become more of a reality.

11. Creating a Community Mental Health Network

Creating a Community Mental Health Network is intended to strengthen the already existing network within a community so that patients do not fall between the cracks. Optimally the collaborative effort between recently discharged mental health patients and their community caregivers continues after discharge. This partnership helps these fragile patients re-enter their communities and maintain their health.

12. Choice for Life: Medical, Legal and Ethical Challenges – Seminar Series

This seminar series is offered as a step in continuing the educational process for healthcare professionals (physicians, nurses, social workers, chaplains, and others) who face the task of balancing both legal and ethical issues daily.

13. DNR (Do Not Resuscitate), No-Code, Comfort Measures Only

Many aging, ill and/or those nearing the end of life are fearful of being kept alive in a state that diminishes their sense of dignity. The essential bond between food, water and life argues convincingly for the presumption that nutrition and hydration should always be provided. A question arises: How do we justify withholding or withdrawing nutrition or hydration while honoring personhood and human dignity?

14. Living Will and Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care Seminar

The living will or power of attorney seminar addresses medical, legal, and ethical plights of patients and caregivers in various settings. This presentation examines the values and wishes of a person while balancing those of their families, team of physicians and caregivers. Issues around competence and incompetence are examined in detail. The concept of a “Wisdom Community” is encouraged. These are people identified by the patient as those who know them best, including their end-of-life wishes. Guardianship and competency issues are addressed as needed.

15. “Take This Seminar to the Hospital with You” – Seminar Series

Never before has healthcare been so central to our lives. Whether dealing with decisions regarding your health or that of a family member or friend, it is essential that we educate ourselves regarding the impact of personal and family values on the decisions we make. How should values affect healthcare decision-making? What opportunities exist for shaping our future in times of illness? This seminar is structured to stimulate both debate and personal reflection.

16. The Illness Event: An Opportunity to Meet the Evolving Self

Our lives are lived and shaped according to a set of values that we develop from a very early age. Values help us to set priorities and establish life goals. During serious illness, whether we are young or old, a “values rearrangement” takes place. One’s old identity is gradually replaced by a new one. Priorities shift. Part of the frustration of this time lies in one’s inability to express the change. Words are not within reach because the once-secure-self is lost and we do not know how to express who we are becoming. “The Illness Event” offers the opportunity to examine one’s values and life goals in the context of illness and our relationships, in order to understand how profoundly we are affected.

17. Informed Consent: The Ethical Dilemma

In situations of informed consent, is the patient treated as partner and “co-journeyer?” This lecture is intended to guide people in the study of informed consent as a process rather than an “event.” The “event” is “signing on the dotted line” without a conversation to explain.

18. A Patient Focused Ethic in a Changing Healthcare Environment

Today’s medical technology is advanced and complex. How can we as individuals contend with the many difficult decisions that confront us when we deal both with the healthcare community and our own “community” (e.g. family, friends, etc)? This talk offers an overview of selected problems in healthcare ethics specifically related to patient care. It will provide individuals with an opportunity to share their insights and knowledge based on experience.

19. Spirituality and Illness

This talk will address the intersection of spiritual values with ethics in patient care.

General Outline:

a. How does one define spirituality?

(1) What is the difference between spirituality and religion?

(2) Are there values specific to spirituality, and if so, are some/all of them common to the illness experience?

b. What is prayer in the context of:

(1) Acute illness?

(2) Chronic illness?

(3) Terminal illness?

c. How does one understand the feeling of abandonment by God often experienced in the context of illness?

d. How can others respond to a patient feeling abandoned by God?

e. Are there “landmarks” in a conversation involving only eye contact and silence?

f. How can significant relationships nourish the remarkable relationship with God that can develop from suffering?

20. How do Ethics, Health and Spirituality Interface in Today’s Complex Healthcare Climate?

• In biblical terms, the environment of healthcare today could be called a wilderness place, a testing place. We have been led into the desert, and it appears as though there is no clear exit. John Shea has said that our moans are produced by God’s presence in our midst. God has gripped us.

• What impact do these words have on our developing moral/spiritual life, not to mention physical well-being? Where and how do moral and spiritual issues intersect, and how do these interface with our physical/mental health and well-being?

• “The power of destruction and the power of rebirth live side by side.” (from the film Roadsigns on a Merry-Go-Round) We are familiar with the “power of destruction” in many areas of our lives. Have any signs of rebirth become evident today in our U.S. healthcare system? What are they?

• We are urged to “lift, hope, lead. Turn the crowd into a community. Actions spring from readiness for responsibility.” (from the film Roadsigns on a Merry-Go-Round) This indicates that a moral task at hand. What is our moral task as healthcare consumers given the healthcare environment today? How and why is this moral task also a spiritual challenge?

• We have all witnessed dying. Dying patients surrender who they were to their new reality. This is a spiritual, psychological and physical reality. Who is it that a person is becoming as the curtain between suffering and relief is pierced by surrender?

21. Community Healthcare Ethics Training Program

Community Healthcare Ethics Training Program sessions are focused educational seminars offered to interfaith groups. The goal is to educate community groups to be of service in their own neighborhoods.

Specifically:

a. Pharmaceutical Ethics

The Center for Ethics and Advocacy in Healthcare 2001 Waukegan Road, Post Office Box 525, Techny, Illinois 60082. Phone: (847) 509-9130.

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