Fellowship
The Charles Warren Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics at Clarian Health Partners sponsors a nine-month fellowship aimed at training health care professionals in clinical ethics, including ethics consultation, hospital ethics committee work, and ethics research. Graduates will become capable members of the ethics community, resources for others facing ethical challenges in patient care, and leaders in the field of medical ethics.
The target audience for the fellowship includes physicians, nurses, chaplains, and social workers. Other members of the community (e.g. attorneys or members of administrative staffs) may also apply.
Application to the fellowship is competitive. The application process includes submission of a written application (which includes several brief narrative essays), a letter of support from the applicant’s immediate supervisor, one letter of recommendation, and interviews with Fairbanks Center staff. The application may be submitted electronically
or on paper.
The core activities of the fellowship include:
Fellowship Activities
The Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics will grant certificates of completion to Fellows successfully completing the nine-month fellowship.
The fellowship requires one dedicated day per week (Wednesdays) for the academic year (September through May) plus additional time for completion of reading assignments and the fellowship project. Clarian employees may continue full time employment at their regular jobs with the permission of their unit managers. Through special arrangements with Nursing, Social Work, and Chaplaincy department leaders, fellows may be permitted release time from normal work assignments to participate in fellowship activities. For others, individual arrangements will be coordinated.
The core activities of the fellowship include:
- A Core Curriculum focused on key areas of clinical ethics, consisting of assigned reading and weekly seminar discussions with Fairbanks Center staff and noted content experts which occur over the nine-month fellowship
- The Fairbanks Ethics Lecture Series, focused on central concepts and practical topics in clinical ethics
- Participation in the Clarian Ethics Consultation Sub-Committee activities, including attendance at the sub-committee’s twice-monthly meetings and participation in bedside consultations. Fellows take call with the on-call ethics consultants 1-2 months.
- Participation as observers in monthly Clarian Ethics Committee meetings
- Attendance, when possible, at other ethics meetings or presentations (e.g. FCME Unit-Based Ethics Conversations)
- Interactions with an ethics Mentor or Mentors who will provide guidance in independent projects and activities for each Fellow
- Completion of an independent ethics research, educational, or quality improvement project. This will be designed and completed with guidance from Fairbanks Center faculty and staff. Examples of this might include research projects, hospital policy development, projects aimed at improving ethical aspects of staff relations, etc.
Current and Previous Fellows’ Projects
- Bill Barrett, MDiv Improving staff-physician communication surrounding futility and end of life care for transplant intensive care patients
- H. Scott Bjerke, MD, FACS Futility assessments in trauma patients: Does the definition change with experience?
- Marly P. Bradley, JD, MD Communication breakdowns in ethics consultation
- Nancy Flamme, MSW A mail survey study of liver transplant clinicians examining the influence of psychosocial evaluation on listing status of liver transplant candidates.
- Maureen Hancock, MSN, PNA Evaluating and managing moral distress in ICU nurses
- Linda Kutlu, RN, BSN An interactive educational model for staff education in end of life care for African-American and Latino patients
- Becky Milan, CNS, CPNP A qualitative and survey study of family experience with pediatric palliative care
- Donna Miracle, RN.C, PhD Ethics of human mothers’ milk banking
- Clara Monroe RN, BSN Nurses’ experiences with ethics consultation
- Rebecca Nicely, RN, BSN What does “DNR” mean to patients and families?
- Alexia Oaks, BSN, RN Ethics of left ventricular assist devices as destination therapy
- Cecilia Quade, RN, BSN A phenomenological study of barriers to palliative care among young adults with life-ending diagnoses
- Carrie Riessen, RN An annotated collection of narrative experiences of nurses participating in elective termination of pregnancy based on prenatal diagnosis
- Zeynep Salih, MD Development of an ethics curriculum for neonatology fellows
- Maggie Uhrich, BSN, RN, OCN Ethical dilemmas in prognostic communication in oncology nurses: A mail survey study of Oncology Nursing Society members
- Carla Zachodni, RN, BSN Development of a novel brain death policy