Advanced Ethics Training for Experienced Clinical Ethics Committee Members

This training provides an opportunity to hone skills of ethical reasoning and understand how disagreements in practice may operate at the level of theory. By the end of the course, participants will be able to engage in more confident ethical discussion of complex cases, understand how the composition and processes adopted by clinical ethics committees affect their mission and outcomes, and have consolidated and expanded their knowledge of ethical issues of contemporary concern.

• Experienced members of clinical ethics committees: professionals from any background or speciality and lay members who have already received some basic training (such as our Introduction to Clinical Ethics)
• Practising clinicians who would like to enhance their knowledge, and practical application, of ethics in the clinical environment.

• Skills of philosophical/ethical argument
• Deontology
• Values-based decision-making
• Utilitarianism
• Justice and resource allocation
• Consolidation of understanding of one ‘core’ ethical issue, such as withdrawal of life-sustaining interventions, pandemic planning, restraint and exclusion, definition of death, use of innovative treatments.
• Introduction to the ethical implications and challenges of an emerging issue

The content will be delivered online live using sychronous interactive lectures, small group exercises and workshops centred on a range of clinical scenarios.

Example 1

• 9.00am - 9.30am: Registration

• 9.30am - 10.00am: Introductions

• 10.00am – 11.00am: How to have a good argument

• 11.15am – 12.00pm: Introduction to Deontology

• 12.00pm – 12.45pm: Values-based decision-making )

• 12.45pm: Break for lunch

• 1.45pm – 2.30pm: Utilitarianism

• 2.45pm – 4.30pm: Facilitated workshop - clinical ethics committee process/practice

• 4.30pm - 4.45pm: Evaluation and depart

Example 2

• 9.00am – 10.15am: Justice and resource allocation
• 10.30am – 11.00am: Four principles approach: The true story
• 11.15am – 12.45pm: Core knowledge: Law and ethics at the end of life 
• 12.45pm: Break for lunch
• 1.45pm – 2.30pm: What's new? Opportunity to explore an emerging issue. 'Blurred edges and tensions: Clinical ethics and public health ethics in the opt-out testing for blood borne viruses in the ED'
• 2.45pm – 4.30pm: Facilitated workshop (challenging cases - an opportunity to apply learning)
• 4.30pm - 4.45pm: Evaluation and depart