Assisted suicide and abortion are just some of the ethical issues health care providers face every day.
The UNM Institute for Ethics is offering a program to help medical workers deal with ethical questions.
The Joan Gibson Health Care Ethics Certificate Program began Feb. 1 but will meet every week for the next two months.
Joan Gibson, creator of the program, said she wanted to ensure that her students had an understanding of ethics.
"I designed a course that would have enough rigor to it that when people finished it, we could, with good conscience, certify that they were certainly conversant with the important ethical, medical, legal, psychosocial issues in current bio-ethics," she said.
Gibson said she started the certificate program in the early '90s to represent a range of ethical issues.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Topics covered in the program include informed consent, end-of-life decisions and reproductive health.
Gibson said these issues often raise questions for health care professionals.
Dr. Lisa Simpson said the program is informative.
"It really started with difficult decisions that folks throughout health care are faced with throughout a daily basis," she said. "Not only in a classroom, but at the bedside where they helped patients' families and others make these decisions."
Simpson said ethics isn't about who's right or wrong but about values and understanding.
"We ask that people hear each other and contribute their views as well," she said.
Simpson said any health care professional in Albuquerque is welcome to register for the certificate program.
"We have attorneys, business people, people in health care, people in different areas of health care, which makes it really broad," she said. "That's what makes it so exciting and so interesting, because you never know what the discussion's going to be like."
Tomai Webb, an administrator at UNM's neurosciences department, said she liked that there were people outside of the health field in the class.
"We had a lot of information on group thought and how groups respond to different ethical
situations," she said. "I found that very interesting."
Webb said she is taking the certificate program to apply what she learns at work.
"I thought it might be helpful to me personally to bring back as a tool to use when helping potential faculty and other staff with difficult ethical situations that happen in the workplace," she said.
Webb said the program has been beneficial.
"It's a great education experience, and it brought to life a lot of issues that I can deal with in my day-to-day work environment," she said.
