A Patient's Last Chapter: Ethical Considerations for VSED, Euthanasia, and MAID

Speaker: Joel Wu, JD, MPH, MA, HEC-C

Currently, there is significant controversy regarding whether and how patients may work with clinicians to influence the time and manner of their death at the end of life. This session will describe treatment options that might allow patients to hasten death at the end of life, including patient refusals of life sustaining treatment, voluntary stopping of eating and drinking, medical aid in dying, and euthanasia.

Learning Objectives: After this webinar, attendees will be able to:

-Define and distinguish between treatment options for potentially hastening death at the end of life.
-Describe the interests of patients in being able to make choices about the time and manner of their deaths at the end of life.
-Describe ethical principles and commitments that justify or limit clinician involvement in interventions that might hasten death.

Unpacking Bedside Bioethics is a quarterly professional development seminar series delivered by the Center for Bioethics. Speakers discuss foundational bioethics concepts, identify ethical dilemmas in clinical cases, & explain how to apply bioethical frameworks to resolve those dilemmas. This interprofessional series is designed for professionals who work in health related fields and health professions students. This is an event of the Office of Academic Clinical Affairs (OACA), hosted by the Center for Bioethics.

Certificate of Attendance will not be given for watching the recording - only for those attending the Zoom session.

Joel Wu, JD, MPH, MA, HEC-C, is a Center for Bioethics Clinical Ethics Assistant Professor and a senior lecturer in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health. He is a co-chair of the University of Minnesota Medical Center's Ethics Committee, co-lead for the clinical ethics consultation service for MHealth Fairview system hospitals, and member of the MHealth Fairview Ethics Council. Professor Wu also teaches courses at the intersection of clinical ethics, public health ethics, and public health law.

Previously, Professor Wu conducted health policy research and development at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine at the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) where he served as a study director on the Board on the Health of Select Populations and the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice. Professor Wu also worked as a research associate for the former Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution and completed post-doctoral fellowships at the Program in Bioethics and Professionalism at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, and in Clinical Ethics at Children's Minnesota and Abbott Northwestern Hospitals in Minneapolis, MN. Professor Wu holds a JD and an MA in Bioethics from Case Western Reserve University and an MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Minnesota.