UK Program for Bioethics

Welcome to the UK Program for Bioethics Web site. We bring people of the UK HealthCare clinical enterprise together with multidisciplinary colleagues with skills and interests in the field of bioethics.

The UK Program for Bioethics is responsible for bioethics education and consultation to the UK HealthCare clinical enterprise. Our program is also involved in education and outreach for the wider clinical community throughout Kentucky, and we are available as a public education resource on bioethics nationwide. View information on the Hospital Ethics Committee.

The UK Program for Bioethics focuses on two main areas for the UK clinical enterprise:

Clinical ethics consultations

We have a clinical ethics consult service that deals with ethical issues and dilemmas in the patient care setting, which may involve patients, family members, the doctor-patient relationship or clinical colleagues. Examples of clinical ethics issues include:

• Confidentiality in the clinical setting
• Diminished capacity to consent 
• Informed consent
• Surrogacy issues
• Advanced directives
• Withdrawal or refusal of treatment 
• End-of-life decision making

These issues can be complicated by a variety of socio-economic, cultural or language barriers.

Bioethics education

We provide bioethics education to the UK clinical enterprise in the form of grand rounds, graduate medical education (GME) or other continuing medical education (CME) activities. For a list of educational presentations delivered to date, contact the program director. We are also the educational resource for the clinical enterprise surrounding ethics and professionalism, moral distress and moral residue in the clinical setting, and organizational ethics in the clinical setting. Independent study in bioethics can also be arranged for undergraduate and graduate students throughout the university, depending on their program requirements.

For a clinical ethics consultation

The Clinical Ethics Consultation Service is available 24 hours, seven days a week. We have a rotating service and a clinical ethics consultant is always on call with a backup number listed on the outgoing greeting of our pager.
Pager: 859-330-0365
E-mail: bioethics@uky.edu

Bioethics Grand Rounds 

Bioethics Grand Rounds typically fall on the third Tuesday of each month at noon in the Chandler Hospital Auditorium (HG-611). Bioethics Grand Rounds are open to anyone on campus.

See our upcoming line-up of exciting speakers! >

H1N1 Ethics

Our Clinical Ethics Consultation Service will address any pandemic ethics questions in light of Novel H1N1 Flu. You may also download our Pandemic Ethics Resource. (PDF, 221 KB)