Ethics Case Conference: “Trisomy 18: Prenatal Diagnosis, Prognostication, & Genetic Bias”

Christen Paradissis, PhD – AMBI – Albany Medical College

Dr. Paradissis is a clinical ethics fellow at the Alden March Bioethics Institute. She obtained a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Utah in 2024. In addition to her doctoral work, Dr. Paradissis has served as a writing panel member for the American Nurses Association’s 2024 revision of the Code of Ethics, was a nursing ethics intern at the Cleveland Clinic in 2021 and practiced as a registered nurse from 2016-2019. Her research focuses on the ethics of trust, betrayal and blame in tripartite relationships in the healthcare setting, as well as discerning the boundaries of professional practice. She is interested in thinking about the role health care institutions play in setting expectations of trust between nurses and patients, about how breakdowns in trust occur when nurses, patients, and institutions blame one another, and about what practices of blame between such parties are morally permissible.

Mary Helen Schwartz, MD – Albany Medical Center

Dr. Schwartz joined the Department of Pediatrics in August 2023, specializing in Pediatric Hospital Medicine with a special interest in Pediatric Palliative Care, and has been appointed an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics. She completed a fellowship with the Department of Hospice and Palliative Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and she completed a Pediatrics Residency at Stony Brook University in New York. Dr. Schwartz earned her medical degree at Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University in Philadelphia.