Drs. Eijkholt and Stahl present at International Conference on Clinical Ethics Consultation

Center faculty members Marleen Eijkholt and Devan Stahl attended and presented at the 14th International Conference on Clinical Ethics Consultation (ICCEC), held June 21-23 in Oxford, England.

Dr. Eijkholt presented as part of a collaborative panel on “Helpfulness in Clinical Ethics Consultation Notes,” which also included Dr. Stahl, Dr. Stella Reiter-Theil, and Dr. Jugen Wallner, who are respectively from Germany and Switzerland. Dr. Eijkholt presented her paper, “An Empirical View on Helpfulness in Clinical Ethics Consultation Notes,” which outlined the data that she had gathered from analyzing case consultation notes from fellow clinical ethicists. She explored the questions: What made their notes helpful? How should clinical ethics consultation (CEC) chart notes be formulated to be most helpful, while being mindful about professional boundaries, and being mindful about the recipients of these notes, i.e. vulnerable health care providers who are not necessarily philosophers? While medical providers are used to reading notes from their fellow consultants in the form of conclusions–such as, “patient is in kidney failure,” “palliative care recommends x dosages of morphine”–ethics consultants hardly ever find themselves faced with a clinical scenario that allows for such “simple” conclusions. Moreover, such authoritarian conclusions are undesirable according to the framework of the clinical ethics profession. CEC recommendations therefore take a different format. After analyzing several notes, Dr. Eijkholt concluded with an acknowledgement of the tension between quality and helpfulness.

Dr. Stahl presented on the panel “Is there a place for clinical ethics consultation outside of the hospital setting?” alongside Kevin Dirksen, Tyler Gibb, and James Hynds. The group discussed models for doing outpatient clinical ethics consultation at their respective hospital settings. Dr. Stahl presented on new efforts here in East Lansing to bridge the inpatient and outpatient settings using ethics consultation handoffs.