About the UNOS ethics webinar series
In an educational assessment, we asked what topics you wanted to learn more about. The most requested was education on ethical issues. That’s why UNOS offers a webinar series that focuses on ethics and provides you with continuing education.
This program is approved by the National Association of Social Workers (Approval # 886443310-0) for one Social Work continuing education contact hour.
Go to UNOS Connect and select Ethics in the course catalog to view recordings of webinars in the series.
Available webinars
Ethical allocation
Featured Experts: Michael Shapiro, MD; Peter Reese, MD; and Bob Veatch, PhD
Hear about the general moral theory behind allocation as well as voluntary risks (alcoholism, non-compliance, etc.), age, status and obesity. Learn about geographical disparities and the tension between local versus national allocation. How do listing practices and exceptions play a role? We’ll cover multiple listing, level of pay, competition for organs, multi-organ allocation, and multiple transplants for the same patient.
Ethics of increased risk donation
Featured Experts: Art Caplan, PhD and Lainie Ross, MD, PhD
Certain illnesses and behaviors put donors into the PHS increased risk category. Learn more about donors with hepatitis, HIV (and the HOPE Act) and cancer as well as those with high-risk histories, such as IV drug use, prison and even multiple transfusions. What about donors with other diseases such as Alzheimer’s? How about patients with Lou Gehrig’s? How much should candidates be told about their donor’s history? Does that change when they have a living donor? Listing practices will also be covered.
Ethics of selection and acceptance criteria
Featured Experts: Art Caplan, PhD; Janet Stevenson and Stephanie Dziedzic
How are patients selected to be listed for a transplant? And how do transplant teams decide which organs to accept for their patients? What role do addiction, age, obesity and compliance with treatment play? Should transplant outcomes in listing drive treatment? What about waitlist modification? And how about centers who say they accept anything, but don’t in practice?
Socio-economic ethical matters
Featured Expert: Janet Stevenson
What happens when someone wants to direct a donation based on race, gender, socio-economic status or membership in a group? Given the cost of transplantation, are transplants really elective? What happens when folks can no longer pay or lose their insurance? What inequities are there for poor people who need transplants, in multiple listing, people who live in rural areas? Learn about valuable consideration in both living and deceased donation as well as poor people who sell their organs in other countries. What are the barriers to donation and transplant for minorities?
Technological advances and ethical conundrums
Featured Expert: Stephanie Dziedzic
What are the ethical considerations in vascular composite allograft (VCA) transplantation, like face and hand transplant? How about the newest elective VCA transplants – uterine and penile transplants? What about the human trial element? What are the special informed consent requirements? How do you weigh the risk of unnecessary exposure to immunosuppression against the benefits? What are the inclusion/exculsion criteria? We’ll also cover other technological advances such as growing organs, cloning to produce human organs, stem cell scaffolds, animal/human hybrids to produce organs and destroying and replacing bone marrow.
An overview of ethics in transplantation
Featured Experts: Art Caplan, PhD; Michael Shapiro, MD
Learn about religious and secular views on transplantation, how we got to our current system, and the concepts of autonomy, justice, non-maleficence, beneficence. Use what you’ve learned to decide what you would do during the case study portion of this session.
The ethics of death
Featured Experts: Michael Shapiro, MD; Bob Veatch, PhD
How is death defined, and why is that so important and even troublesome? What are the cultural implications about how treat patients who are alive versus those who are dead? How does care/treatment and insurance coverage change? What about making the choice to die? What ethical concepts are involved when a terminal patient wants to die? And what is imminent death donation?
Ethical procurement
Featured Experts: Michael Shapiro, MD; Bob Veatch, PhD
Dig into the meaty topics of directed donation and social media to find donors. Explore international topics such as presumed consent and transplant tourism, the use of prisoners as organ sources and how international transplant tourism impacts patients in the U.S.
Ethical complexities and living donation – 1
Featured Experts: Peter Reese, MD; Elisa Gordon, PhD, MPH; Laurie Shore, MSW, LCSW; and Mary Amanda Dew, PhD
When finding a living donor, there are many important ethical considerations: pressure and coercion, social media campaigns, maintaining confidentiality, donor rights, informed consent and medical and psychosocial evaluation. What about the risks of being a liver donor, including death? And what are the hospital’s responsibilities when living donors have complications?
Ethical complexities and living donation – 2
Featured Experts: Lainie Ross, MD, PhD.; Laurie Shore, MSW, LCSW; and Mary Amanda Dew, PhD
How can we remove the disincentives to living donation? What if the living donor ends up needing a kidney? Should uninsured people be considered for living donation? What constitutes valuable consideration? And what about non-directed donation, orphaned donors, and paired donations and chains?
