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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Tamara Ruggiero, 301-984-6657
ATLANTA, June 27—Like all medical professionals, renal professionals frequently face ethical dilemmas: How do you provide unbiased care for patients who may challenge your personal beliefs? How do you respect a patient’s wishes – when those wishes may be opposed to the oath you took as a medical professional?
On Thursday, August 7, 2008, renal professionals will gather at the Cobb Galleria in Atlanta for a one-day American Kidney Fund professional education conference, “Weighing the Outcomes: Ethical Issues in Kidney Disease.” This conference will help renal professionals work through their ethical challenges by providing them with a decision-making process that they can implement individually or as a team.
Social workers, nurses, technicians, registered dietitians, registered dietetic technicians, and diabetes educators may receive continuing education units. The conference will include the following sessions:
- The Foundation of Medical Ethics: This session will provide conference participants with an overview of medical ethics, as well as familiarize them with basic ethics principles and terminology.
- Ethical Decision-Making: This session will walk participants through an ethical decision-making framework that they may apply in their daily practice. Participants will learn how to analyze dilemmas and apply formal ethics to solve problems. The process will be applied to a case study using the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ new Conditions of Coverage for End-Stage Renal Disease.
- Ethics of Patient Care – The How & The Why: Because many ethical dilemmas are faced by the health care team, rather than only by one individual, this session will provide participants with strategies that will enable them to work within a team to analyze and resolve ethical challenges. Participants will learn how health care teams can respect each team member’s values without allowing those values to influence the care they provide.
Concurrent Sessions: All concurrent sessions will explore a particular facet of patient care using case studies. Participants will analyze and discuss each case study while applying the decision-making model learned earlier in the day. The concurrent sessions are as follows:
- Equal Care for All
- The Promise of Patient-Centered Care
- Advocating… Ethically
- Respecting Wishes: End-of-Life Decision-Making
Closing Session: The closing session, So What? Now What?, is aimed at helping participants identify and explain at least three new things learned during the course of the conference and describe how to apply the new material in their professions.
Register by July 21 to receive early bird rates. To register online or to learn more details, visit http://www.kidneyfund.org/professionals/conference-series/atlanta.html.
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The American Kidney Fund is our nation's #1 source of direct, treatment-related financial assistance to kidney patients, and is a leader in providing health education and outreach to people diagnosed with, or at risk for, kidney disease. For its stewardship of the donated dollar, AKF has earned top ratings from Forbes Magazine, Reader's Digest, Charity Navigator and the American Institute of Philanthropy. AKF is a member of the Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance. |
