Moral Distress: Unpacking, Identifying & Managing a Human Experience

We will discuss the ethical concept of moral distress and its application within healthcare; identify causes of moral distress and how they might impact clinical care; and strategize ways to mitigate moral distress felt by healthcare providers, including but not limited to physicians, nurses, and social workers.

Our Speaker: Hilary Mabel is a Bioethicist/Healthcare Ethicist at the Center for Ethics, and an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the School of Medicine. She specializes in bioethics and healthcare ethics. Mabel teaches in the Master of Arts in Bioethics program and at the School of Medicine.

Mabel publishes conceptual bioethics scholarship as well as qualitative research and quality improvement work in healthcare ethics. Her interests include complex issues in healthcare ethics, professionalization of clinical ethics, moral distress, transgender care and bioethics, and reproductive ethics. Mabel's scholarship has appeared in Pediatrics, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Transgender Health, The American Journal of Bioethics, Hastings Center Report, The Journal of Clinical Ethics, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, and Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, among others.

Mabel has worked as a clinical ethicist and ethics fellowship director. She is a certified healthcare ethics consultant (HEC-C) and has conducted over 1,000 ethics consultations. Her clinical experience spans 18 hospitals across two major health systems, ranging from rural community hospitals to urban quaternary care hospitals. She has experience designing and leading hospital ethics programs, conducting bedside ethics consultations, providing moral distress support to healthcare professionals, and advancing organizational ethics and values-based alignment efforts.

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Host or Publisher Emory University Center for Ethics