Identifying Sources of Clinical Conflict: A Tool for Practice and Training in Bioethics Mediation.

Bioethics mediators manage a wide range of clinical conflict emanating from diverse sources. Parties to clinical conflict are often not fully aware of, nor willing to express, the true nature and scope of their conflict. As such, a significant task of the bioethics mediator is to help define that conflict.

Teaching and Learning the Techniques of Conflict Resolution for Challenging Ethics Consultations.

Professional mediators have long possessed a skill set that is uniquely suited to facilitation of difficult conversations between and among individuals in emotionally charged situations. This skill set has increasingly been recognized as invaluable to the work of clinical ethics consultants as they navigate conflicts involving families, surrogates, and providers. Given widespread acknowledgment that communication difficulties lie at the root of many clinical ethics conflicts, mediation offers techniques to enhance communication between conflicting parties.

A response to Dubler's commentary on "surmounting elusive barriers: the case for bioethics mediation".

Dubler's commentary focuses on knowledge of clinical medicine and "institutional savvy" as pieces of the skill set required of bioethics mediators. Here, I describe why, as a practical matter, such requirements are unlikely to be achieved by a meaningful number of aspirants. Simultaneously, I examine the reasons why Dubler's criteria are inherently risk-laden and would be better addressed as a dialogue among experienced practitioners regarding the merits of alternative stylistic approaches, rather than as universal threshold criteria for the practice of bioethics mediation.

Surmounting elusive barriers: the case for bioethics mediation.

This article describes, analyzes, and advocates for management of clinical healthcare conflict by a process commonly referred to as bioethics mediation. Section I provides a brief introduction to classical mediation outside the realm of clinical healthcare. Section II highlights certain distinguishing characteristics of bioethics mediation.

Sickle cell disease and the "difficult patient" conundrum.

The convergence of sickle cell disease's unique political, historical, cultural, medical, and psychological dimensions begets an especially distressing plight for sufferers of the disease. Too often, this convergence results in sickle cell patients being classified as "difficult." As Autumn Fiester recently argued, traditional understanding of the "difficult" patient warrants reevaluation.