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.
Unrepresented: The Ethics of Caring for Patients Without Surrogates
- Jaime Konerman-Sease, PhD, HEC-C
Publications
Gariti, A., Berkman, E., Clark, J., Derrington, S., Dudzinski, D., Madrigal, V., Mann, D., Walter, J., & Wolfe, I. (2025). Normothermic Regional Perfusion in Pediatric Organ Recovery—Guidelines for Its Ethical Implementation. Pediatric Transplantation, 29(5), e70101.
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.
Konerman-Sease, J. (2024). Afterlife and Life-After. Literature and Medicine, 42(1), 21-25.
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.
Konerman-Sease, J. (2024). People on Floors: Creating Relics Out of Medical Waste. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 67(4), 556-565.
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.
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.
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).
Recordings
Beyond Translation: Language, Power, and Epistemic Injustice in Clinical Encounters
Jennifer Needle-Suarez, MD, MPH, HEC-C, University of Minnesota and Najma Dahir-Abdulla, MPH, University of Minnesota
Sept. 25, 2025
To Suffer What We Can't Evade: What is Medicine’s Role in Responding to Suffering?
Tyler Tate, MD, MA
Aug. 26, 2025
What Would You Want? Navigating Life, Death, and Organ Donation When the Heart Stops
Brendan Parent, JD
March 20, 2025
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