Fairbanks Fellowship in Clinical Ethics

What is the Fellowship in Clinical Ethics?

The Charles Warren Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics at Indiana University Health offers a nine-month, part time fellowship aimed at training health care professionals in clinical ethics, including didactic and interactive seminars, ethics consultation experience, and a scholarly project. Graduates become capable members of the ethics community, serve as a resource for colleagues facing ethical challenges in patient care, and have the potential to grow into leaders in the field of medical ethics.

The Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics will grant certificates of completion to fellows successfully completing the nine-month fellowship. Fellows will be evaluated on participation in seminars and meetings, performance in supervised ethics consultations, and completion of a scholarly project.

What will you do in the Fellowship in Clinical Ethics?

Education

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  • A core curriculum focused on key areas of clinical ethics, communication, and cultural competency/awareness.  Fellows are provided pertinent scholarly literature to prepare their participation in weekly seminar discussions with Fairbanks Center faculty, affiliate faculty, and noted content experts.
  • Fellows attend the Fairbanks Ethics Grand Rounds focused on central concepts and practical topics in clinical ethics.
  • Optional participation in monthly Indiana University Health Academic Health Center Ethics Committee meetings.
  • Fellows will progress through a curriculum in ethics consultation note writing.

Service

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  • Fellows will participate in the IU Health Ethics Consultation Sub-Committee activities, including attendance at the sub-committee’s twice-monthly meetings.
  • Fellows will be on-call for the IU Health academic health center ethics consultation service for approximately 1 month with ethics faculty supervision.

Scholarly Project

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  • Fellows will complete a scholarly project, an independent ethics research, educational, or quality improvement project. Examples include but are not limited to research projects, hospital policy development, focused ethics curricula creation, systematic literature reviews, and projects aimed at improving ethical aspects of staff communication, relations, and moral distress.
  • Project milestones are provided to assist in successful project completion, ranging from project idea formulation to review of the literature and completion of an annotated bibliography to work in progress (WIP) sessions, along with organized deadlines for other tasks related to the project.
  • Each fellow will be assigned a mentor from the FCME faculty who will supervise and provide guidance for the respective fellow’s project.

Information For Managers

Click the more information button to learn what you can expect if your team member is accepted to the Fairbanks Fellowship in Clinical Ethics

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Informational Video

Click below to watch our 2023-2024 Fairbanks Fellowship in Clinical Ethics Information Video

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Application Information

The target audience for the fellowship includes physicians, advance practice providers, nurses, chaplains, and social workers. Other members of the greater community (e.g. attorneys or members of administrative staffs) may also apply. It is recommended that applicants have a background in a clinical setting. Application to the fellowship is a competitive process.

Applicant Requirement:
- Bachelor's Degree

Application Components:
- CV or Resume
- Brief Narrative Essays
- Letter of support from immediate supervisor with permission of time protection
- Letter of recommendation attesting to character and work ethic

If accepted into the Fellowship:
- A tuition of $3,000 will be paid to the Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics by one month prior to the start date of the fellowship
- A tuition of $500 for if concurrently enrolled in an advanced degree program (Masters or higher)
- Tuition forgiveness will be granted to IU Health Employees
- Must be available on Wednesday's during the academic year (late August-late May)
- Additional time requirements outside of Wednesday include time on ethics consults, reading assignments for didactics, and the scholarly project

Application Timeline

Applications for the 2024-2025 fellowship year are now closed.
Applications for the 2025-2026 fellowship year will open in February 2025.