Physicians’ Moral Experience and Moral Distinctions in Philosophical Bioethics
Letting the experience of physicians involved in end-of-life care practices speak to the philosophical-bioethical debate about the difference between killing and allowing to die.
Summary | Updates | Timeline | Team | Acknowledgements
Project Summary
With the recent changes in legislation concerning Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), Canadian physicians are navigating their way through ethically uncharted territory. The last four decades of bioethical debate over the distinction between killing and letting die have not produced enough consensus to aid the ethical reflection of physicians who engage in practices leading to patient death. What is needed is more of a conversation between theory and practice. This project will take important first steps in this direction.
Goals
The project goals are as follows:
clarify the main contested points in bioethical debates about the distinction between killing and allowing to die;
Assess the moral experience of physicians involved in practices leading to patient death (withdrawing treatment and administering MAID);
Revisit and refine existing conceptual debates (Obj 1) in light of the moral experience of physicians (Obj 2);
Develop, based on the results of Obj 3, a set of guidelines for ethical reflection for use in the instruction of physicians in residency.
Updates
Timeline
Meet the Team
Andrew Stumpf
Principal Investigator
Andrew is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St. Jerome’s University in the University of Waterloo, and has a passion for many subjects, having published books on Ancient Philosophy and Business Ethics. He has recently been focusing most of his teaching and research energies on end-of-life ethics. He has developed three courses (PHIL 319J, PHIL 321J and MEDVL 391) and has recently carried out three grant-funded projects in this area. Andrew is the founder of the Kernel Network and the Principal Investigator on the Clinicians' Experience project, with a particular focus on the bioethics side of the project.
Kieran Bonner
Co-Investigator
Kieran Bonner is Professor of Sociology at St. Jerome’s in the University of Waterloo. He has also taught at York University, and in Ireland and Alberta. He is author of A Great Place to Raise Kids: Interpretation Science and the Urban Rural Debate, Power and Parenting: A Hermeneutic of the Human Condition and co-editor of Redefining the Situation: The Work of Peter McHugh. He developed the radical interpretive perspective to integrate theory, ethics and practice which he has applied to a wide range of issues, including the grey zone of health and illness. Kieran is the other investigator on the project with a particular focus on the practice of end of life decisions.
Midori Matthew
Graduate Research Assistant
My name is Midori, and I am the student co-investigator on the Physicians’ Moral Experience and Moral Distinctions in Philosophical Bioethics SSHRC IDG project. Presently, I am a Master of Arts candidate at York University in Socio-Legal Studies. Previously, I obtained by Bachelor of Sciences from the University of Waterloo in Health Studies with a minor in Legal Studies. As an interdisciplinary scholar across both health sciences and social sciences, this project synthesizes several of my current research interests as it is situated at the intersection of bioethics, public health, law, and sociological thought.
Dominic Rogalski
Undergrad Research Assistant
Dominic graduated from the University of Waterloo with an honours science and joint honours philosophy degree in 2018. He is a prospective medical student and currently works as a social support worker. Dominic’s passion for serving older adults and adults living with disabilities motivates his conviction that attending to the contextual setting and concrete experiences of moral agents is instrumental in producing more satisfying ethical analysis. Dominic is grateful to contribute to the project as a coauthor of the literature review paper.
Zack MacDonald
Librarian Collaborator
Zack MacDonald is an Assistant Librarian at St. Jerome’s University in the University of Waterloo. As a Librarian, he works across many fields including interdisciplinary research data management and data visualization, digital and virtual reconstructions historical built environments, and pedagogy and learning space design. He is also a Co-Investigator on the Environments of Change SSHRC Partnership project and the digital librarian for DRAGEN Lab at St. Jerome’s University. Most recently, he has begun a project investigating the impact that learning space Indoor Environment Quality have on student and faculty wellbeing, using both ambient technologies and subjective data.
Jae Doncillo
Social Media
Jae Doncillo is a communications professional specializing in Social Media. With a diverse work
background, he has spent stints in a variety of industries including
Food Services, Insurance, Law and Post Secondary Education. Jae is the Kernel Network's Social Media Consultant and Content Creator, assisting with articulating the project's goals and maximizing it's digital visibility. Jae also serves as a corporate engagement and social media specialist for Dana Hospitality LP -a national food services company.
Sophia Richardson
Undergraduate
Research Assistant
Sophia is currently an undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo in Knowledge Integration, pursuing the environmental sciences, sustainability and design. Catch Sophia singing acapella on campus or having a cup of coffee in the Environment Coffee Shop. She is the website developer and graphic designer for this project and the Kernel Network.
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to the institutional supporters of our research:
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
St. Jerome’s University Faculty Research Grant
The office of the Dean at SJU
UW Research Office
The Clinicians’ Experience research project was made possible by an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
An internal St. Jerome’s University (SJU) Faculty Research Grant helped to support research on related topics in preparation for the study.
The Dean’s office at St. Jerome’s also provided matching funds and in-kind support for the Clinicians’ Experience project, including an office dedicated to the project in Sweeney Hall, SJU campus.
We’d like to personally thank Angela Roorda and Ruth Knechtel from the UW Arts Research Office for their painstaking help editing and commenting on the grant application for the project, as well as Dr. John Yoon and Dr. Steven Bednarski for their helpful feedback
Radical interpretive research requires dialectically attending not only to what the ‘data’ says but also reflexively to the horizon or lifeworld within which the data was generated.