Ethics in Our Every Day: Personality Problems, Restricted Resources, and Balance

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: While Medical Ethics is often considered in the context of high intensity clinical dilemmas or research quagmires, we may face ethical issues with practical implications in daily life. Everyday ethical challenges may occur due to personality-related issues, allocation of limited resources, and attempts to balance patient and family needs. These ethical conundrums may not be overtly intrusive, but still have substantial consequences, particularly as we weigh the risks and benefits of decisions which affect large groups, or face burnout and a depleted workforce. They may also affect our daily lives beyond the workplace, as they may involve interpersonal interactions or relational factors. As Dr. Arthur L. Caplan (founder and Professor of the New York University Medical Ethics Division) has noted, “Ethics concerns not only questions of life and death but how one ought to live with and interact with others on a daily basis. The ethics of the ordinary is just as much part of health care ethics as the ethics of the extraordinary.”
With these concepts in mind, this program provides a case-based approach arising from practical, real-life scenarios. These scenarios focus on interpersonal and personality problems, resource limitations, and balance between patient and family needs – the last of these may also include balancing our clinical responsibilities with our own families' needs. Particularly as we face increasing levels of burnout and ever-expanding work in these times of rapid change and electronic barrage, we can seek to strengthen our moral compasses to guide actions in complex interpersonal, finance-constrained, or difficult-to-balance circumstances.

OUTCOME OBJECTIVE 1: Apply ethics principles to problems with limited resources

OUTCOME OBJECTIVE 2: Understand ethical approaches to personality problems and interpersonal issues

OUTCOME OBJECTIVE 3: Discuss patient-family and work-life balance in the context of an ethical foundation

BACKGROUND STATEMENT: As one author noted, "Greater attention to everyday ethics has profound philosophical roots… starting in the early 20th century". Amidst hard times & tough decisions in this post-COVID era, we seek to enable attendees to draw from ethical foundations for complex daily interactions & decisions.