The Centre for Medical Ethics and Law, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University has been selected to host the 16th Annual International Conference on Clinical Ethics and Consultation (ICCEC) in Cape Town, South Africa. Given that this is the first time that the ICCEC will be hosted on the African continent, the theme ‘Beyond Borders: Exploring new frontiers’ is apt. The conference will explore clinical ethics challenges that traverse borders and shift paradigms, against a backdrop of cultural complexity and diversity.
Clinical ethics is an area of medical ethics that involves an analytical, structured approach to resolving ethical dilemmas and to assist in decision-making and policy development. Technological advances in clinical care at the beginning and end of life, coupled with resource allocation restraints present difficult conundrums in ethical decision-making. Technology and artificial intelligence also raise new ethical and legal challenges in the arena of biotechnology.
Healthcare professionals are required to adapt to diverse settings with a multitude of cultural and social contexts. The migration of patients and health workers across borders is a phenomenon which leads to interesting ethical complexity in the clinical setting. The sub-theme of gender boundaries acknowledges the challenges faced by intersex and non-binary staff, students and patients in the healthcare setting. The Centre envisages that the conference will encompass an advocacy function in facilitating and encouraging the development of clinical ethics consultation in healthcare settings throughout the continent.
The sub-themes of the conference are:
o Exploring diversity in philosophical approaches on clinical ethics committees
o Origins and migration
o Clinical ethics, the law and society
o Beginning and end of life conflicts and cultural pluralism
o Emerging technologies and clinical ethics
o Clinical ethics dilemmas across gender boundaries
The ethical challenges raised by the themes will be of interest to health care professionals and scholars, bioethicists, legal scholars, policy makers and health science partners from around the world. The organisers look forward to sharing ideas and contributing new and diverse perspectives on clinical ethics that will help us to step beyond our boundaries of comfort to experience different philosophical systems that influence decision making in clinical ethics in different parts of the world. This is particularly relevant as geographical borders become more porous and migration patterns bring cultural diversity and ethical challenges to various corners of the globe.
Africa is a continent of wide diversity – genetically and culturally. We are also, as one human family, all part of the 4th industrial revolution, facing the challenges that this new digital journey in health care and clinical ethics will bring. We invite colleagues to register for the conference and submit abstracts for posters, oral presentations or symposia via the website: www.iccec2020.co.za/ .
The closing date for abstracts is 18 October 2019. The conference takes place from 31 March to 3 April 2020 at the Spier Conference Centre, Stellenbosch.
