Events

Thursday, March 12, 2026     12:00 - 1:00 MDT Speakers: D Stewart MacLennan, PhD, NP Director, Quality Assurance; Associate Teaching Professor, Faculty of Nursing; Adjunct Associate Professor, John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre   About: Rising asociality among youth is reshaping how learners enter health professions education, often with fewer practiced habits of sustained, reciprocal engagement with other humans. Health ethics theory reminds us that authentic engagement supports attentiveness, trust, shared understanding, and accountable responsiveness. When engagement becomes thin, avoidant, or performative, identity formation may drift toward role performance over relational presence, increasing the risk of missed cues, weakened dialogue, and moral disengagement in care. This presentation examines the resulting ethical concerns and considers early directions for educational and practice responses across diverse health professions contexts. More information: please call 780-492-6676, e-mail dossetor.centre@ualberta.ca or visit the Dossetor Centre website. Via Zoom. Registration is required. All are welcome; free to attend. Click here to register!

Thursday, March 26, 2026     12:00 - 1:00 MDT Speaker: Eric Mathison, PhD, HEC-C Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto Scarborough; Adjunct Assistant Professor, John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre   About: Voluntariness is widely considered a necessary condition of valid informed consent. Coercion is one way voluntariness can be compromised, and when it is, the standard view holds that valid consent is impossible. But what should we actually do when a patient has been coerced? This practical question has received surprisingly little attention compared to the extensive literature on what coercion is. I examine this question through a case of third-party coercion, which occurs when the person making the threat is not the party who requires the patient’s consent to proceed. The coercer and the consent-seeker are distinct agents. I survey the main available responses and argue that each turns out to be deeply unattractive. I then conclude that there are cases where full voluntariness is not a necessary condition of valid informed consent. In certain cases, we should proceed with the patient’s decision despite the coercion. More information: please call 780-492-6676, e-mail dossetor.centre@ualberta.ca or visit the Dossetor Centre website. Via Zoom. Registration is required. All are welcome; free to attend. Click here to register!

Thursday, April 9, 2026     12:00 - 1:00 MDT Speakers: Gelsey Davis, RN, MN Student Graduate Student, Faculty of Nursing University of Alberta Sadie Deschenes, PhD, RN Assistant Professor, Faculty of Nursing & Adjunct Assistant Professor, Dossetor Centre, UofA   About: The purpose of this study is to explore how families experience end-of-life care (EOLC) in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) during the death of their child. High-quality EOLC can improve families' last moments with their child and better prepare them for the bereavement process. However, existing research highlights ongoing challenges, including limited resources, insufficient training for nurses, and difficulties integrating cultural, spiritual, and contextual factors into practice. Many families report anxiety, depression, and regret related to decisions made around the time of their child’s death. Using an interpretive description methodology, family experiences with EOLC practices in the PICU were examined through semi-structured interviews. Preliminary findings indicate a need for enhanced training for critical care nurses and stronger bereavement follow-up support for families. The study aims to translate these findings into practical recommendations to strengthen EOLC practices in PICUs that uphold the dignity of the dying process and advance nursing competency in this ethically complex and under-researched area of care. More information: please call 780-492-6676, e-mail dossetor.centre@ualberta.ca or visit the Dossetor Centre website. Via Zoom. Registration is required. All are welcome; free to attend. Click here to register!

Thursday, April 16, 2026     12:00 - 1:00 MDT Speaker: Jared Bly, MD, CCFP(EM), FCFP Emergency Physician, Royal Alexandra Hospital; Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine and Clinical Lecturer, Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta   Objectives: 1. Identify utilitarianism as the ethical foundation of disaster triage 2. Briefly review utilitarianism as a philosophy 3. Consider some shortcomings of this approach 4. Explore alternative ethical frameworks 5. Suggest some ideas of how we should approach disaster triage More information: please call 780-492-6676, e-mail dossetor.centre@ualberta.ca or visit the Dossetor Centre website. Via Zoom. Registration is required. All are welcome; free to attend. Click here to register!

Thursday, June 11, 2026     12:00 - 1:00 MDT Speaker: Monique Visser, RN, MBE, HEC-C Clinical Ethicist, Clinical Ethics Service, Health Shared Services; Clinical Lecturer, John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre   Objectives: This presentation will aim to: Articulate the distinction between major (big ‘E’) ethical issues and everyday ethics (little “e’) Establish a comprehensive working definition by outlining the key components of everyday ethics Briefly examine the impact of everyday ethics on health care professionals   More information: please call 780-492-6676, e-mail dossetor.centre@ualberta.ca or visit the Dossetor Centre website. Via Zoom. Registration is required. All are welcome; free to attend. Click here to register!

Thursday, September 17, 2026     12:00 - 1:00 MDT Speaker: Nicholas Dunn, PhD Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Lethbridge   One of the most contentious aspects of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in Canada is the question of whether it should be available to persons for whom mental illness is their sole underlying medical condition (MI-SUMC). The debate has largely centered on questions about decision-making capacity, vulnerability, suicidality, and whether clinicians can reliably determine psychiatric irremediability. Yet relatively little attention has been paid to a more fundamental question about the nature of mental disorder itself. In this talk, I consider how assumptions about the ontology of mental disorder bear on the ethics of MAiD MI-SUMC. In particular, I look at externalist approaches in the philosophy of psychiatry, according to which mental disorders are not wholly internal to the individual but are partly constituted by a person’s relationship to their social, material, and cultural environment. Bringing these accounts into dialogue with theories of structural injustice, I develop the concept of structurally embedded suffering. I argue that the structural embeddedness of psychiatric suffering has implications both for how irremediability for mental disorder is assessed and what the state’s responsibility is to remediate structural injustice in the context of mental health care. More information: please call 780-492-6676, e-mail dossetor.centre@ualberta.ca or visit the Dossetor Centre website. Via Zoom. Registration is required. All are welcome; free to attend. Click here to register!

Thursday, October 1, 2026     12:00 - 1:00 MDT Speaker: Trudo Lemmens, LicJur, LLM(bioethics), DCL Professor and Scholl Chair in Health Law and Policy, Jackman Faculty of Law, University of Toronto   Advocates for broad practice of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) claim that offering MAiD to solve serious suffering associated with mental illness is constitutionally required and sound policy. After briefly debunking the general constitutional rights claim, this presentation will discuss in some detail why providing MAiD for mental illness cannot be justified as sound health policy consistent with suicide‑prevention. Concrete case examples from Ontario’s Chief Coroner MAiD Death Review Committee reports and from the psychiatric euthanasia practice in Belgium and the Netherlands will help appreciate the concerns about offering MAiD as a form of therapy for mental health related suffering. Canada’s broad practice of MAID outside a strict end-of-life context is already putting many Canadians at risk of premature death; a risk that would be so much higher if MAiD would be officially permitted for sole reasons of mental illness. More information: please call 780-492-6676, e-mail dossetor.centre@ualberta.ca or visit the Dossetor Centre website. Via Zoom. Registration is required. All are welcome; free to attend. Click here to register!

Thursday, October 15, 2026     12:00 - 1:00 MDT The Role of Uncertainty in ICU Moral Decision Making - a Dossetor Centre Health Ethics Seminar Speaker: Graham Mah, MD, FRCPC, MSt(Practical Ethics) General Internal Medicine and Critical Care Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Critical Care and Dossetor Centre   Objectives: Review three domains of uncertainty that pertain to the ethics of medical decision making Discuss some limitations of the principalist model of biomedical ethics in addressing uncertainty Review some potentially helpful theories from literature that may address uncertainty within each domain   More information: please call 780-492-6676, e-mail dossetor.centre@ualberta.ca or visit the Dossetor Centre website. Via Zoom. Registration is required. All are welcome; free to attend. Click here to register!