CHESSmates

How they incorporate what they learned in the CHESS Surgical Ethics Fellowship into their daily role

“The CHESS fellowship has helped me develop a fluency in the language of ethics which is independently meaningful to me as a community surgeon bent towards exploring ethical questions since I was a student.  Additionally, this education has helped me serve on the institutional ethics committee, as well as helped support my job search upon departing my prior institution.  Perhaps most importantly, the CHESS fellowship has fostered my creating relationships with other leaders and advocates in clinical and systemic bioethics.  I think many of us hope that leveraging the power of our shared voices will hasten systemic changes that will incentivize more uniformly ethical practices across the complex and varied landscape of healthcare.  We ethicists generally agree that ethical solutions prioritize meaning over expedience, often requiring stakeholders to make investments in the future.”

How the CHESS fellowship will be helpful in the future 

“Beyond the above answer, I am the surgical ethicist for the Northwest Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons.  In this capacity, my primary role is to select and coordinate content for medical students, surgical residents, and colorectal surgery fellows to present at the Ethics Teaching Series at our annual meeting.  The Teaching Series is funded by a grateful patient with the goal of increasing awareness, fluency, and ownership of clinical ethical problem-solving among the attendees.”