Elements of Moral Experience in Clinical Ethics Training and Practice

Book excerpt: Elements of Moral Experience in Clinical Ethics Training and Practice: Sharing Stories with Strangers is a philosophical and professional memoir of the education, training, and professional development of becoming a clinical ethics consultant. Utilizing a phenomenological and narrative lens, this book offers a fresh and energizing window into the field of healthcare ethics by pairing compelling clinical narratives of what it is like to do clinical ethics consultation with clear reflections and accessible introductions to key philosophical, professional, and humanistic roots for responsible practice. Each chapter contains a firsthand account of a clinical ethics encounter – with vivid detail, verbatim dialogue, and internal monologues that reveal the consultant’s reflections throughout the consultation. Following or at times woven into the clinical story, each chapter explores elements of practice by highlighting philosophical, professional, and humanistic resources that connect to and shape meaning in everyday clinical ethics work, drawing from phenomenologically and narratively oriented ethicists (Richard Zaner, Andrea Frolic, Mark Bliton, and Stuart Finder), influential thinkers in adjacent fields (Alfred Schutz, Kurt Wolff, and Pierre Bourdieu), and creative writers and artists (Barry Lopez, Joe Henry, Audre Lorde, Robert M. Pirsig, and Dar Williams). The innovative structure signposts and illustrates distinct elements of clinical ethics experience and practice, inviting the reader to move through the book in different ways, according to their own learning goals, as graduate students, advanced trainees, practicing clinical ethicists, or ethics educators. By focusing on themes identified in the unique instances or experiences of first-hand accounts, or by tracing the philosophical reflections on grounding and orienting texts from the field, readers can access different elements of clinical ethics practice while the book as a whole models a process for considering and interrogating these elements. Elements of Moral Experience in Clinical Ethics Training and Practice: Sharing Stories With Strangers invites readers to articulate, reflect on, share, and ultimately learn from their own experiences in clinical ethics consultation.