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July 28, 2025
The Sixth Annual Catholic Health Care Innovation in Ethics Forum
The Sixth Annual Catholic Health Care Innovation in Ethics Forum (CHIEF) was hosted virtually in October by the Hospital Sisters Health System (HSHS). This year's conference successfully accomplished CHIEF's mission: to provide a dynamic forum for ethicists to exchange innovative ideas and promote effective integration of ethics in Catholic health care. The conference was coordinated by the CHIEF planning committee that consisted of membership representing Catholic health care. Members were ethicists from CHRISTUS Health, CommonSpirit Health, Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System, Mercy Health, OSF Health care, Providence Health, SSM Health, and Trinity Health.
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July 28, 2025
Balancing Mission and Margin: Addressing the Needs of Unsheltered Populations in Emergency Medicine
Catholic health care has long dealt with the challenges of balancing the organization's mission versus the margin of operating a business in the 21st century. In its purest sense, the margin of an organization is what remains when expenses are subtracted from revenue. Our modern era is not immune from navigating this balancing act, primarily within emergency medicine, or in under- resourced or rural communities lacking sufficient governmental programs including shelters, subsidized housing, food banks or soup kitchens, and behavioral health resources.
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July 28, 2025
Clarifying Cardiac Death in DCD through Aristotle and Aquinas: Active and Passive Potentiality
The definition of death has recently come into question, which has caused some authors to propose changes to the definition of death. Some of these concerns stem from questions about the compatibility of current practice in organ donation after cardiac death (DCD) and the definition of death in the Uniform Declaration of Death Act (UDDA). The lack of agreement on what changes should be made, or whether changes should be made at all, led to the recent abandonment of efforts to change the definition.
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July 28, 2025
Ethical Guidelines for Use of NRP cDCD
Catholic health systems across the United States are increasingly encountering requests from Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs) to utilize a new technique for organ procurement, normothermic regional perfusion in controlled donation after circulatory death (NRP cDCD).This technique involves restoring oxygenated blood flow to organs after the declaration of death by the circulatory standard with the arch and cerebral vessels often clamped in the process.
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July 28, 2025
Policies and Prevention: Ending the Use of Restraints for Pregnant and Laboring Patients in Catholic Hospitals
While over 40 states have passed laws that restrict the use of restraints during the birthing process for patients coming from carceral settings, the practice of using technologies such as handcuffs, leg restraints and belly chains to restrain patients coming from carceral settings is still occurring, even in states with anti- shackling laws.
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July 28, 2025
Literature Review: Recent Contraception
Not only did the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision lead to the implementation of abortion restrictions in some states, but it also affected clinician and patient behavior in the realm of contraception due to access to these services being inextricably linked. In states which have enacted the most restrictive bans post-Dobbs, there are concerns that contraceptive restrictions will also be enacted, especially on emergency contraception (EC).