The Surgical Ethics Working Group (SEWG) at Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics is offering the 2025 Harvard Surgical Ethics Virtual Conference Series that will explore where ethical decision-making intersects with surgical practice. Session topics will include teaching bioethics, transplant ethics, global surgery, and AI in surgery. The need for ethics education and expertise is driven by rapid advancements in technology, evolving surgical practices, teaching methods, and global disparities in surgical care, leading to more difficult ethical challenges for healthcare professionals.
| Course Format This virtual conference series will be held weekly on Mondays over four weeks in April 2025. Each session will run from 7:00-9:00pm Eastern Time and will feature a different topic exploring timely and, in some cases, controversial ethical topics in surgery. Session topics and dates are as follows: - “Teaching Bioethics” on April 7, 2025
- “Controversies in Transplant Ethics” on April 14
- “Ethical Challenges in Global Health and Surgery” on April 21
- “Implementation of AI in Surgery: Ethical Considerations” on April 28
Each session will include three short talks (20-25 minutes each) by expert faculty from the Center for Bioethics and others. This will be followed by a moderated question and answer period with the speakers. The interactive format is designed to encourage participant engagement and address their specific questions. Presentations will be available on-demand for all paid attendees for six weeks after the conference. At the end of each session, participants will be required to complete a short online series of self-assessment questions. The course aims to enable participants to critically assess and apply ethical principles in their own practice. The website will be updated over the next few weeks to include a detailed schedule featuring exciting topics and speakers. |
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| Accreditation In support of improving patient care, Boston Children’s Hospital is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team. See site for details. |
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| Objectives Upon completion of this course, participants will: - Utilize case studies, ethical theories and frameworks, and artificial intelligence for the development and delivery of surgical ethics education, ensuring that the methods promote integrity, professionalism, and respect for persons.
- Critically evaluate ethical dilemmas in transplantation including normothermic regional perfusion for organ donation, vascularized composite allotransplants including uterus transplants, and the use of brain-dead donors as experimental subjects for xenotransplantation using case-based discussions and current guidelines.
- Analyze ethical challenges in global surgery with a focus on global health priorities and the complex effects of the loss of local expertise on efforts to improve surgical access in low-and-middle income countries to order to augment decision-making in resource-limited settings.
- Understand and assess the impact of artificial intelligence on clinical decision making, identify potential risks and benefits, where it might most easily and appropriately be deployed, and propose strategies to ethically integrate AI into surgical practice.
- Develop strategies for implementing ethical guidelines into daily surgical practice by compiling knowledge from case studies, panel discussions, and journals, aimed at improving patient care and professional accountability.
Registration To register, please visit the site for details and complete the online form. If this is your first time registering for a course at Boston Children’s Hospital, you will need to create an account. Please use an email address that you check frequently, as it will be used to send important information about the course. Pre-registration is required. Once you have registered you will receive a confirmation email with a registration receipt. Course access instructions will be sent a few days prior to the course launch. If you have questions or need assistance with registration, please direct all inquiries to [email protected]. |
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