The Center for Practical Bioethics is a unique, 25 year-old guiding light in bioethics. Accredited and internationally renowned for its research, publications and teaching, the Center has trained hundreds of groups on ethics in clinical settings.
Our History
The Center has for over 23 years convened a group called the Kansas City Regional Ethics Committee Consortium which has been dedicated to the education and improvement of clinical ethics committees in the Midwest. Thus, the Center has been actively and continuously engaged in the practical work of training clinical ethicists in how to do the work of ethics consultation and health policy better longer than anyone in the nation.
Our Partners
Not only has the Center trained and grown the number of hospital ethics committess in the Kansas City region, these institutions that are part of our Consortium have become partners of the Center for a wide range of initiatives, the most recent being the CCE Program. Many of these hospitals will serve as clinical sites for students to go on clinical rotations, from which standardized patients will come, and from which our faculty serve.
Moreover, the Certificate Program is conducted in collaboration with The American Journal of Bioethics and bioethics.net, the world’s online leader in bioethics education. This means that students in the program benefit from a curriculum based upon AJOB texts and will learn about scholarly publishing. Moreover, each student will receive a one-year subscription to AJOB as part of their tuition to the world’s most cited journal in bioethics, health services research, public health and a dozen other fields.
Our Curriculum
The Certificate Program’s online and onsite curriculum is uniquely based upon the ASBH Core Competencies for Health Care Ethics Consultation, The American Journal of Bioethics texts, and the JCAHO Standards. Each week’s video lecture, texts, and course objectives are linked to these competencies and standards so that students can clearly identify the concepts and practical skills they are acquiring.
Our Location
Kansas City is unique in that it is home to three medical schools, two nursing schools, a school of pharmacy, and a law school. Moreover, the Center has existing partnerships with these medical institutions for bioethics or medical teaching. This means that our Certificate Program students will also be able to be affiliated with some of the most prominent bioethics faculty – and learn with them in a city second only to Boston for the number of clinical education schools. Moreover, Kansas City is located in the heartland, making it easy to visit from nearly every part of the nation for our onsite practicum. In short, we are the hub of the nation when it comes to bioethics.
Our Faculty
Click Image for Podcast!
Our faculty are actively engaged in the practical work of clinical ethics and health policy. They conduct research in diverse areas of bioethics ranging from advanced care planning, pain and palliative care, reproductive medicine, public health ethics, health disparities, and aging policy. They serve on professional and governmental advisory committees that issue the policies that govern the very topics we teach, and make headlines discussing the changing world of medicine and science. Moreover, our faculty develop mentoring relationships with our students, even over a period as short as a semester and encourage them to publish their work from their courses.
