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.

We focus on two main areas for the UK clinical enterprise:

Clinical ethics consults
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, and 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.