Clinical Ethics
The Center for Bioethics advances compassionate and fair clinical care that respects the dignity of patients and the professionals who care for them. We foster this aspect of our mission through academic scholarship; educational opportunities including bedside teaching, credit-bearing courses, and our Unpacking Bedside Bioethics webinar series; service on national and regional task forces; and a robust clinical ethics service for M Health Fairview system hospitals.
What Would You Want? Navigating Life, Death, and Organ Donation When the Heart Stops
- Brendan Parent, JD
To Suffer What We Can't Evade: What is Medicine’s Role in Responding to Suffering?
- Tyler Tate, MD, MA
Publications
Overbey, D. M., Stephens, E. H., Parent, B., Ameduri, R. K., Catarino, P. A., Needle, J., ... & Turek, J. W. (2025). Review of Current Normothermic Regional Perfusion Practice in Pediatric Cardiac Donation. The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, S0003-4975(24)01091-9. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article
/abs/pii/S0003497524010919
Konerman-Sease, J. (2024). Afterlife and Life-After. Literature and Medicine, 42(1), 21-25. https://doi.org/10.1353/lm.2024.a935829
Konerman-Sease, J. (2024). On the Ground: Terrestrial Theopoetics and Planetary Politics, by O’neil Van Horn. Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology, 28(2), 222-225. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685357-02802003
Konerman-Sease, J. (2024). People on Floors: Creating Relics Out of Medical Waste. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 67(4), 556-565. https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2024.a942078
Konerman-Sease, J. (2023). Responding to people in pain with Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. Christian Bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, 29(3), 207–220. https://doi.org/10.1093/cb/cbad018
Baker, J. N., Friebert, S., Needle, J., Jiang, J., Wang, J., & Lyon, M. E. (2022). An Intervention in Congruence for End-of-Life Treatment Preference: A Randomized Trial. Pediatrics, 149(5), e2021054796. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2021-054796
Konerman-Sease, J. (2022). What Bioethics Grad Students Want in Catholic Health Internships. In The Third Annual Catholic Healthcare Innovation in Ethics Forum, 18(1). Available at https://www.chausa.org/docs/default-source/hceusa/what-bioethics-grad-students-want-in-catholic-health-internships.pdf?sfvrsn=d578c7f2_0
Recordings
When Patients Say No: Autonomy, Constraints, and the Weight of Moral Distress
Jennifer Needle-Suarez, MD, MPH, HEC-C, University of Minnesota
March 6, 2025
How Can a Patient Be Dead While Their Heart Still Beats? Addressing Ethical Challenges in the Determination of “Brain Death”/Death by Neurological Criteria
Margy McCullough-Hicks, MD, University of Minnesota, Benjamin Miller, MD, University of Minnesota, and Joel Wu, JD, MPH, MA, HEC-C, University of Minnesota
Feb 25, 2025
Do You Believe in Miracles? Productively Engaging Patients’ Hopes for a Miracle
Devan Stahl, PhD, HEC-C, Baylor University, Trevor M. Bibler, PhD, HEC-C, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston Methodist Hospital
Dec 3, 2024
A Patient's Last Chapter: Ethical Considerations for VSED, Euthanasia, and MAID
Joel Wu, JD, MPH, MA, HEC-C, University of Minnesota
Aug 27, 2024
Withdrawing and Withholding: Distinctions and Controversies in End of Life Care
Jaime Konerman-Sease, PhD, HEC-C, University of Minnesota, Justin Penny, DO, MA, HEC-C, University of Minnesota
May 21, 2024
The Angst in Adolescent Decision-Making
Ian Wolfe, PhD, MA, RN, HEC-C, Children's Minnesota
Feb 20, 2024
Conscientious Objection: The Pharmacist’s Right to Refuse to Fill Contraceptive Prescriptions
Tim Stratton, PhD, RPh, FAPhA, University of Minnesota Duluth
Nov 14, 2023
When Can Clinicians Refuse an AMA Discharge Request? The Ethical Challenge of AMA Discharges and Involuntary Hospitalization
Joel Wu, JD, MPH, MA, HEC-C, University of Minnesota
Aug 29, 2023