Preconference Sessions*
To register for one of the sessions listed below, add them to your conference registration package today! If you have already registered for the Annual Conference, call ASBH Member Services at 847.375.4745 to add the session(s) to your registration.
HEC-C Review Course (001)
Wednesday, September 18, 2:00–5:30 PM
Fee: $125
Abram Brummett, PhD HEC-C; Margaret “Maggi” Budd, PhD MPH ABPP HEC-C; Anca Dinescu, MD HEC-C; Amanda Hine, PhD HEC-C; David Oxman, MD HEC-C
Developed and presented by ASBH HEC-C Review Course Task Force members, this course will provide a thorough review of the core references and four content domains through the use of sample questions and discussion about the examination content outline. The course will be highly interactive, with opportunities for attendees to test their knowledge and connect information with the content outline and core references as a review framework. The 3.5-hour session will include discussion and practice test questions for each of the following:
- Healthcare Ethics Issues and Concepts: Big Picture
- Healthcare Ethics Issues and Concepts: Clinical Encounters
- Healthcare Systems and Health Law
- Clinical Context
- Local Healthcare Organizations and Policies
Each attendee will receive an HEC-C Study Guide featuring an extended analysis of the sample questions following the session.
Mediation Workshop Series
Wednesday, September 18, 2:00–4:00 PM and 4:30–6:30 PM
Ethics consultation requires ethicists and other stakeholders to navigate several complex forms of communication, from difficult conversations with patients and their families to collaborations with fellow staff members and ethics committees. Learn to communicate more effectively, diffuse conflicts, and build trust through this two-part workshop series. Each workshop will present tools and data about effective communication in addition to interactive exercises and small-group activities.
You may choose to attend both workshops or one that best meets your interests.
Mediation Workshop: Conflict Resolution Skills for Ethics Committees (002)
Wednesday, September 18, 2:00–4:00 PM
Fee: $85
Haavi Morreim, JD PhD
Often, ethics consults stem not from moral puzzlement, but from conflict - - staff tensions about a complex situation, a "difficult" patient, intra-family feuds, and myriad other scenarios. Here, the optimal consult usually is not opining about ethics, but resolving conflict: exploring the situation, learning the back-stories that fuel the conflict, helping people articulate their most important priorities, and forging a mutually agreeable plan. Ethics committees and consultants must be prepared to discern what approaches and resources will best suit each consult. This workshop teaches clinical conflict resolution, including negotiation, facilitation, and assisted negotiation. The workshop begins by presenting a key "toolset" of skills, such as: managing expectations, affect labeling, normalizing, active listening, and probing for detail. These core techniques help build the trust on which successful resolution relies, thereby enabling those in conflict to reach their own workable agreements. Practice scenarios are interwoven so participants can gain comfort in using each skill. The workshop culminates in a two-part exercise focused on a complex problem of family dynamics. In Part One, small-group consult teams will "huddle" to discuss how best to approach the situation. Following a debrief, smaller pairings then conduct conflict resolution conversations. Everyone will participate in all practice exercises, followed by extensive debriefing for each. The presenter is a highly experienced and frequent mediator, both for the courts and in the clinical setting. She teaches 4-day conflict resolution/mediation trainings for clinicians, has co-taught 5-day mediation trainings designed for attorneys, and also provides full-day "communications bootcamp" trainings for residents.
Mediation Workshop: Managing Challenging Conversations through Skilled Facilitation (004)
Wednesday, September 18, 4:30–6:30 PM
Fee: $85
Autumn Fiester, PhD
The ASBH has long endorsed the facilitation approach as the best model for ethics consultation yet many ethics consultants have not been trained in facilitation techniques. Empirical data show that the majority of US clinical ethicists hold group meetings with clinical staff, patients, and families as part of an ethics consult, even though many have not had formal training in group facilitation techniques. Having skill-based knowledge in the approaches to group interaction is especially important when tensions in the group are running high and members of the group are experiencing anger, frustration, burnout, or moral distress. This workshop will provide facilitation foundational training by teaching group management, strategies to manage difficult and contentious conversations among and between the clinical team, family members, and patients, and pitfalls to avoid that can cause a group meeting to fail. In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn how to effectively conducting complex, multi-party, and emotionally charged meetings with a diverse set of stakeholders. Careful attention will be paid to the issue of values-imposition and how to avoid it in consultation. Participants will master advanced facilitation through a combination of didactic presentations, question and response activities, and small group activities. This 2-hour interactive workshop session will be organized around 6 key facilitation skills. For each skill, there will be a short didactic presentation of the technique, followed by an interactive all-group activity to achieve mastery. The final 15 minutes of the workshop will be reserved for a concluding Q&A session.
Beyond case discussions: Training committee members to contribute to clinical ethics work (003)
Wednesday, September 18, 3:00–6:00 PM
Fee: $125
Leah Eisenberg, JD MA HEC-C; Joan Henriksen, PhD RN HEC-C
Healthcare ethics committees (ECs) benefit from including a diversity of disciplinary perspectives, but clinician volunteers likely have inconsistent education in clinical ethics. Often, committee education focuses on theoretical knowledge and case discussions with little emphasis on practical skills. Even ethics committee members (ECMs) who do not plan to lead ethics consultations should receive skills-based training so they better understand the process of ethics consultation, the complexity involved, and how the way the consultant frames an ethics question impacts the analysis and recommendations that follow. This workshop will offer accessible, dynamic tools for teaching ECMs how to structure and write ethics questions. Our time together will be interactive, using conversation, reflection, and hands-on activities to practice the discrete steps involved. Exercises will highlight the importance of naming stakeholders and their values and demonstrating how defining the action under consideration guides the rest of the consult. We will invite participants to discuss barriers they have encountered when training EMCs and share our own, including unanswerable questions, negatively framed consult requests, and the difficulty ECMs face when they “change hats” between their day job and thinking about clinical ethics. The workshop leaders are experienced clinical ethicists who regularly lead skills-based courses about ethics consultation for ECMs with a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. We have seen what works (and doesn’t) when teaching ECMs what clinical ethics truly involves so they can enhance their ability to meaningfully participate on the EC.
Register today for the 2024 ASBH Conference and these preconference sessions! For those that have already registered, contact ASBH Member Services at 847.375.4745 to add the session(s) to your registration.
*All times listed are Central Daylight Time (CDT).