What About the Family? - Ethical Issues in Health Care

How can familial relationships inform people’s approach to living with illness or disability? What are the choices people make around treatment options? What is the influence of broader social and cultural values on their responsibilities?

Health care is not only of great importance to individual patients. The impact of medical decisions can also have a devastating effect on a patient’s family and relatives. Care providers have very little opportunity to involve the family in the care given to a patient. Legislation and guidelines relating to healthcare revolve around the individual, despite the fact that patients make many of their decisions in consultation with the family. Questions needing more family-based ethics arise throughout the care sector, from home care and genetics to questions concerning the beginning and ending of life.

In this summer school on ethical issues in health care, we will focus especially on questions related to person-centered and shared decision making, screening (from preconception till adult screening) healthy ageing and ‘end of life care’. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, we welcome PhDs and Postdocs working in the field of ethics, as well as those working in health care (public health) more broadly: communication, sociology and medical anthropology.

Set in the beautiful, historical city of Groningen, participants will spend the week enhancing their knowledge and understanding of the theoretical approaches to ethics of families, and their applications. Participants will have many opportunities to present their own research and benefit from feedback from internationally renowned scholars.