Staff
Paul R. Helft, MD (Director) -
Dr. Helft was appointed Director of the Charles Warren Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics in November, 2004. A native of Indianapolis, he completed his undergraduate degree in humanities, medical degree, his internship and residency in internal medicine, and fellowships in hematology/oncology and clinical medical ethics at the University of Chicago. There, he was a Fellow and Senior Fellow and Doctor-Patient Relationship Scholar at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. Dr. Helft joined the faculty of the Indiana University School of Medicine in 2001, where he is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine. His clinical work is based in the Gastrointestinal Oncology Program at the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center. At Clarian Health Partners, he is a member of the Ethics Committee and co-chairs the Ethics Consultation Subcommittee.
Dr. Helft oversees all aspects of Fairbanks Center operations and is responsible for the creation of its major programs, including the Fairbanks Fellowship in Clinical Ethics and the Fairbanks Program in Nursing Ethics. Dr. Helft’s own research interests have focused on the ethical aspects of doctor-patient communication. He is the author of more than thirty publications and dozens of abstracts. He has lectured widely on ethics and gastrointestinal malignancies, and has been the principal investigator on seven grants. In 2007, because of his work in creating connections in ethics between doctors and nurses, he was awarded the Victoria L. Champion Boundary Spanning Award from the Indiana University School of Nursing. He has taught ethics to scores of multidisciplinary professionals and created the core curriculum taught to ethics fellows at the Fairbanks Center.
Patricia D. Bledsoe, MEd, MSW, LCSW (Program Manager and Senior Affiliate Faculty) -
Patty completed her undergraduate degree in English at Franklin College, Franklin, IN, a Master’s Degree in Secondary Education at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA, and received her Master’s Degree in Social Work from Indiana University. In addition to more than fifteen years of ethics committee and ethics consultation work, she has attended intensive ethics training sessions at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and at the University of Washington in Seattle. Patty has been an active member of the Ethics Committee since 1992, and has served on the Ethics Consultation Service since 1998. Her areas of expertise include ethics education, clinical ethics consultation, conflict mediation, psycho-social aspects of end-of-life care, and ethical decision making.
Prior to joining the Fairbanks Center in 2005, Patty spent 14 years as the clinical social worker for the Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Indiana University Hospital. During that time she served over 1,000 BMT patients and families by providing psycho-social assessments, mediation and crisis intervention, individual and family counseling, continuing care planning, advocacy, and resource referral.
At the Fairbanks Center she is involved in all aspects of program planning and support, personnel management, and financial stewardship. She mentors ethics fellows and graduate student interns, coordinates the work of Clarian’s Ethics Consultation Service, and serves as an ethics liaison to several hospital committees.
Rose Howard, MS (Administrative Assistant) -
A native of Oberlin, OH, Rose Howard earned a B.A. in Elementary Education from Cedarville University in Cedarville, OH, and a Master of Science in Education from Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis.
Prior to joining the Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics in 2005, Rose worked on the Methodist Hospital campus for 27 years, first as a medical secretary and then as an administrative assistant in the Clarian Health Executive Offices. Rose has also taught lower elementary students at Bethesda Christian School in Brownsburg, IN.
At the Fairbanks Center she provides comprehensive administrative support for FCME staff and programs, and manages the myriad behind-the-scenes details necessary to the Center’s operations. In addition to her work at the Fairbanks Center she is a certified massage therapist in private practice, and enjoys spending time with her family of pets.
Amy R. Chamness (Program Coordinator) -
A native of the Indianapolis area, Amy earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Biology, with a minor in Philosophy, from Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana. During college she completed a summer internship with Clarian Health Partners where she was assigned to the Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Indiana University Hospital. After graduation, she was immediately hired by the IU BMT Program to work full-time as the Data Specialist. During her three year tenure with the BMT Program, she tracked data on greater than 500 transplant patients, organized a BMT data management committee, assisted with reaccreditations and insurance contract data, compiled reports and statistics, and was the administrator for the program’s database.
Amy joined the Charles Warren Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics as the Program Coordinator in June, 2008. Her responsibilities include providing comprehensive coordination for programs, projects, and events sponsored by the Center, such as the Fairbanks Ethics Lecture Series, website development and maintenance, and support for research projects and quality assessment activities across all programs.