Grand Rounds Seminar - Opening of Bioethics Conference

When

Wednesday, 7 September 2022 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM

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Addressing parent/clinician differences and conflicts: 

A "transcultural" approach to bioethics 

Synopsis

This plenary session is named in honour of the recent Clinical Director of the Centre for Bioethics, Associate Professor Jill Sewell. Professor Jing-Bao Nie will open the National Paediatric Bioethics Conference by considering difference, a feature constantly encountered in life that can be the source of both goodness and conflict. Cultural difference constitutes a main cause for parent-clinician conflict in paediatric practice. Anne Fadiman's influential book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, offers a vivid journalist and anthropological account on a chain of tensions and serious friction between the parents of Lia Lee, a Hmong child of a refugee family from Laos, and the US health professionals. For the author, the tragedy is about the "collision of two cultures". In this talk and drawing from case examples, Professor Nie asks whether the moral sentiment of a common humanity might help us better understand and practically address cultural and other differences. He will suggest that it can, according to an approach of "ethical transculturalism" nourished by classical Confucianism which is inherently universalistic.

The 13^th National Paediatric Bioethics Conference runs from 7-9^thSeptember and is free for RCH/MCRI employees. Please register at www.rch.org.au/bioethics

Speaker

Jing-Bao Nie BMed, MMed, MA, PhD is a Professor at the Bioethics Centre, Otago Medical School, University of Otago, New Zealand. Growing up in a remote village in southern China, he was trained in Chinese medicine in China, sociology in Canada, and medical humanities in the US. Among his over 130 peer-reviewed publications are Behind the Silence: Chinese Voices on Abortion and Medical Ethics in China. He has also co-edited Japan's Wartime Medical Atrocities and thematic issues for Bioethics, Developing World Bioethics and Kennedy Institute of Ethics J. His books were reviewed as "a landmark contribution" (The Lancet) and "embodying a style of bioethics radically different from [the mainstream]" (American J Bioethics). He has delivered nearly 100 invited speeches at conferences and universities in Asia, Australasia, Europe and the UK, and North America. His hobbies include, in recent years, running weekly cross-country half-marathons in the awe-inspiring landscapes of Aotearoa NZ. 

Zoom webinar link to participate online: Click to join