by Holly Hayes
I recently discovered the book Bioethics Mediation: A Guide to Shaping Shared Solutions by Nancy Neveloff Dubler and Carol B. Liebman.
The book:
offers stories about patients, families, and health care providers enmeshed in conflict as they wrestle with decisions about life and death. It provides guidance for those charged with supporting the patient’s traditional and religious commitments and personal wishes.
Conflicts come in different guises, and the key to successful resolution is early identification and intervention. Every bioethics mediator needs to be prepared with skills to listen, “level the playing field,” identify individual interests, explore options, and help craft a “principled resolution” — a consensus that identifies a plan aligned with accepted ethical principles, legal stipulations, and moral rules and that charts a clear course of future intervention.
Nancy Neveloff Dubler is a Senior Associate at the Montefiore-Einstein Center for Bioethics and Professor Emerita of Bioethics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Carol B. Liebman is Clinical Professor at Columbia Law School.
The book includes actual role plays with expert commentaries, tools and detailed case analysis. We welcome your thoughts on bioethics mediation in healthcare.
Holly Hayes is a mediator at Karl Bayer, Dispute Resolution Expert where she focuses on mediation of health care disputes. Holly holds a B.A. from Southern Methodist University and a Masters in Health Administration from Duke University. She can be reached at holly@karlbayer.com.
