Everyday Clinical Ethics in the Care of Infants and Their Families
Presented by Elaine C. Meyer
This webinar has been postponed and will be re-scheduled. The new date will appear here shortly. To register for the webinar, please click here. Through the kindness of the presenter, a recording of the webinar will be available following the presentation.
Elaine C. Meyer, PhD, RN, MBE
Clinical bioethics conjures images of dramatic healthcare challenges such as organ donation, genetic testing, rationing of healthcare resources, and end-of-life decision making. By contrast, everyday clinical ethics issues arise regularly within the space of clinical encounters and encompass “ordinary” ethical moments whose ethical dimensions are not typically recognized as such. Examples of meaningful everyday ethics include respecting time for appointments, honoring patient and family values and preferences, accurately explaining treatments and eliciting questions, and upholding dignity and confidentiality. This presentation will offer a review of bioethical principles (respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice) and integrate aspects of narrative ethics and virtue ethics to deepen our understanding of everyday ethics as it relates to the care of infants and their families. We will consider a broad everyday ethics skill set that we can incorporate into our practice including an awareness of core values and self-reflective capacity, perspective-taking and empathic presence, communication and relational skills, cultural humility and respect, organizational understanding and know-how. Emphasis will be placed on cultivating all-important ethical awareness that can enable us to recognize and begin to act on the ethical dimensions of the care we provide to infants and families entrusted to us.
Elaine C. Meyer, PhD, RN, MBE is a child and adolescent psychiatric nurse, clinical psychologist, and ethicist. She is senior attending psychologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, faculty at the Center for Bioethics, and associate professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard Medical School. Her work emphasizes patient/family perspectives and priorities, challenging conversations in healthcare, care at the close of life, and simulation education. She collaborates with anesthesiology colleagues on a research program devoted to patient-centered anesthesia informed consent. Ethics interests focus on everyday clinical ethics, moral distress, virtue ethics, patient advocacy, vulnerable populations, and humanism in healthcare. She is fellow of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare and Associate Editor of Simulation in Healthcare. She delivered a TEDx Talk entitled On Being Present, Not Perfect that has over 100,000 views, presents internationally, and has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles and chapters.
Through the kindness of the presenter, a recording of the webinar will be available here following the presentation.