Bioethical consensus promotes a shared decision making model, which requires healthcare professionals to partner their knowledge with that of their patients—who, at a minimum, contribute their valu...

In the wake of injustices in healthcare, the field of clinical ethics consultation would benefit from new methods that support ethicists in addressing the role of intersecting systems of oppression in healthcare decision-making.1 We argue for an expanded view of Delany and colleagues’ critical dialogue method to accomplish this by integrating a constructivist lens.2 By doing so, critical dialogue holds the potential to not only encourage a deeper examination of operating moral assumptions but also offers an important framework for examining (...) how underlying social structures shape ethical reasoning in clinical cases.3 As a first step in consultation methods, ethicists are often encouraged to solicit the viewpoints of treatment teams. Taking a constructivist viewpoint, these encounters can reveal to ethicists the narratives that teams share, which are iteratively developed through patient and treatment team interactions, and play a central role in how teams interpret cases. Further, consider that concepts in clinical ethics cases can directly contribute to the characterisation of patients by treatment teams, such as decisional capacity or agreeableness to care. In this regard, how treatment teams frame ethical concerns is not necessarily a direct reflection of the core issues; rather, their interpretations are partially rooted in narratives about patients and the interpersonal dynamics through …. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 10, October 2024, Page 48-50.