An Ethical Approach to Medical Research, Care and Education
.jpg "Laura Anderko, the Robert and Kathleen Scanlon Chair in Values Based Health Care")
.jpg "William Blazek, SJ, MD, serves on the Defense Health Board, a federal advisory committee to the Secretary of Defense")
(This is part 5 of 6 of a series of articles excerpted from "A Medical Mission" in the Spring/Summer 2009 issue of Georgetown Magazine. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4)
Before there was bioethics, there was the Hippocratic Oath. Medicine has always raised philosophical and moral questions. With the decoding of the human genome, we have inherited a windfall of new knowledge—as well as a gathering storm of new ethical questions.
GUMC’s Center for Clinical Bioethics addresses these questions and makes sure that an eye is kept on the ethical dimensions of medicine at the Medical Center. It functions in concert with the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and the department of philosophy on Main Campus, as well as with faculty at the law school.
Center scholars participate in institutional review boards, the Georgetown University Hospital Ethics Committee and interdisciplinary and post-care rounds. Faculty also collaborate with MedStar’s ethics program, which is based at the Washington Hospital Center.
The four-year Bioethics Curriculum for Health Care Professionals directed by the GUMC center brings together graduate nursing students with second-year medical students. The center also organizes a formal ethics curriculum for the internal medicine house staff and sponsors colloquia and conferences. It provides continuing ethics education for faculty, staff, students and the wider community, and center faculty are actively engaged in a variety of research projects in clinical bioethics, both theoretical and empirical.
An Ethics Consult Service on behalf of the Hospital Ethics Committee is another resource at the center. Faculty and other interested medical center personnel consult regularly on clinical cases that staff, patients, family and surrogates find morally troubling. Consultants are available by pager, 24 hours a day, seven days per week.
Carol Taylor, RN, PhD, (G’97) is a founding member and director of the center, a senior research scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, and an associate professor of nursing at Georgetown.
“The underlying message, whether I’m talking with students at Georgetown or health care professionals in Australia, is that they need to understand the human consequences and the power they have to affect how people are born, live and die,” Taylor has said. “Who you choose to be on any given day has an impact on many, many people, and in this profession you can never forget that. The exact words you use can change a life, even if you never know the difference you make.”
Like the bioethics center, the O’Neill Institute provides university-based ethics resources to doctors, health care providers, policymakers and others, so the institute fits in well with Georgetown’s dedication to the mission and to the Jesuit principle of cura personalis – care of the whole person.
So does the new Robert and Kathleen Scanlon Chair in Values Based Health Care at NHS. The chair recently was filled by Laura Anderko, who served as associate professor and director of the Nursing Centers Research Network. Anderko will organize academic activities related to health care equity, as well as launch new avenues for experiential learning, especially among the undergraduate student body. She will also help convene a variety of campus offices and programs that have a stake in the improvement of health.
“It is very exciting that Laura is joining the faculty,” says Kathleen Maas Weigert, director of the university’s Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching & Service. “Her commitment to social justice complements the university’s strong track record of outreach to the community. Her health care focus will help ensure that critical questions about health care access, delivery and quality remain at the forefront of our academic activities.”
The endowed position was created through the generosity of Janet (NHS’75) and Brian Hehir in memory of Janet Hehir’s parents.
GUMC faculty members are also providing expertise to the federal government. The Department of Defense named William Blazek, SJ, MD, assistant professor of medicine, to its Defense Health Board, a federal advisory committee to the U.S. Secretary of Defense. The board is charged with providing independent scientific advice and recommendations on matters relating to operational programs, health policy development, health research programs, and requirements for the treatment and prevention of disease and injury. It also promotes health and the delivery of health care to members of the military and their families.
“It is more critical today than ever before to have leadership on this board that understands the challenges of meeting the health needs of our U.S. service members and DOD beneficiaries,” Taylor says.
The Jesuit as a faculty appointment at the Center for Clinical Bioethics. He served for five years as an Infantry Officer in the 101st Airborne Division and is a veteran of operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Following his residency at Loyola University in Chicago, Blazek entered the Society of Jesus and professed perpetual vows in 2003.
By Frank Reider, excerpted from the Spring/Summer 2009 issue of Georgetown Magazine
