‘Bioethics and conflicts of care in the hospital arena – How care ethics can (not) serve nursing issues’ by Prof Helen Kohlen

Past Event

Date
19 November 2014, 1:30pm - 3:00pm

Location
Lecture Theatre, Oxford Martin School
34 Broad Street (corner of Holywell and Catte Streets), Oxford, OX1 3BD

This seminar series is hosted by the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing and The Oxford Martin School, and funded by the John Fell Fund.

While the language of autonomy and principle-based ethics has dominated clinical ethics in the hospital arena, care-ethics and a language of care has been marginalized with relevant effects on the representation of nursing issues in clinical ethics. The presentation is based on the following questions: (1) What does the history of applied (bio-) ethics tell us about care ethics from a nursing perspective? (2) What are the findings in clinical ethics? (3) What do field studies in the hospital arena reveal about the language of bioethics and care ethics with a focus on nursing issues?

Speaker: Professor Helen Kohlen, Professor of care policy at Philosophical-Theological University of Vallendar/ Koblenz and Adjunct Professor at the University of Alberta.

Helen Kohlen is professor of care policy and ethics at the faculty of nursing at the Philosophical-Theological University of Vallendar/ Koblenz and Adjunct Professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Besides the University of Edmonton, she was Visiting Professor at the University of Mexico and is looking forward to a Visiting Professorship at the University of Utrecht (collaborating with Frans Vosman). She studied social science at the University of Hannover and got her doctorate degree in political science, focusing on biopolitics and its effects on practical arenas in health care. Her research focuses on transformations of caring practices in medicine and nursing. Currently she is investigating into end-of-life care practice in intensive care (an international research project: England, Ireland, Brazil, Palestine and Germany). She did transnational research on hospital ethics committees (for which she was awarded) and designs caring committees together with clinical practitioners in several hospitals all over Germany.