Lectures and Events
The events below include our biweekly Montgomery Lectures, other events we host, and relevant events hosted by other groups at Northwestern University and its affiliated clinical partners.
The Montgomery Lectures Series is presented biweekly on Thursdays from noon to 12:45pm, and is open to all. Presenters are faculty in the Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics program, CBMH members, and special guests. This series was named in 2013 for Emeritus Professor Kathryn Montgomery.
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Jan
09
The “Value” of Clinical Ethics: Isn’t it Obvious? - Jeanne Wirpsa
Chicago - 12:00 PM - 12:45 PM
The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics Program
Presents
A Montgomery Lecture
With
M. Jeanne Wirpsa, MA, BCC, HEC-C
Medical Ethics Program Director, Northwestern Memorial Hospital
Faculty, MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics,
University of Chicago Medical Center
Faculty, McGaw Bioethics Scholars Program,
NU Center for Bioethics & Medical Humanities
The Value of Clinical Ethics: Isn t it Obvious?
As healthcare organizations navigate the vicissitudes of market forces, clinical ethics faces increased pressure to demonstrate value-added to the organization. If clinical ethicists do not create our own outcome metrics, we risk having these imposed on us in ways that threaten the very soul of the profession. This talk presents a multi-pronged approach by one medical ethics program to answer the question that continues to vex our profession: How do we demonstrate value to those who pay for our service, as well as to those whom the service is intended to serve ? (ASBH, Core Competencies for Healthcare Ethics Consultation, 2011, 34). In considering outcome metrics, we sought to balance accountability to external priorities identified by the organization such as mortality, length of stay, and staff retention with goods that we perceived preserved the intrinsic aims and value of clinical ethics itself such as promoting value-sensitive care and creating ethical climate. The speaker hopes to engage leaders of bioethics and medical humanities programs who undoubtedly face similar questions about what their curriculum adds to the formation of medical professionals.
This lecture is open to the public and will be held in the Searle Seminar Room in the Lurie Research Building (303 E Superior), Chicago Campus. For those outside the Chicago area and anyone who would prefer to attend remotely, a Zoom option is also available.
** PLEASE REGISTER TO RECEIVE THE ZOOM LINK**
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
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Jan
23
Twenty(ish) Years of Medical Improv: Origins, Establishment, and Next Steps - Katie Watson
Chicago - 12:00 PM - 12:45 PM
The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics Program
Presents
A Montgomery Lecture
With
Katie Watson, JD
Professor of Medical Social Sciences, Medical Education, and Ob/Gyn
Faculty, Medical Humanities & Bioethics Graduate Program
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Twenty(ish) Years of Medical Improv: Origins, Establishment,
and Next Steps
Professor Watson created and taught what is believed to be the first medical improv class in 2002, in 2011 she coined the term medical improv in her Academic Medicine article reporting FSM student response to the method, and in 2013 she began a summer train-the-trainer program which led to the dissemination of her FSM medical improv curriculum to over 300 clinicians and teachers across healthcare disciplines and countries. In this lecture she will use this example of creation and dissemination to reflect on lessons she s learned about medical communication, medical humanities teaching in general, curriculum creation as an intellectual and creative endeavor, and the challenges of meeting the needs of both new learners and aging professors.
This lecture is open to the public and will be held in the Searle Seminar Room in the Lurie Research Building (303 E Superior), Chicago Campus. For those outside the Chicago area and anyone who would prefer to attend remotely, a Zoom option is also available.
** PLEASE REGISTER TO RECEIVE THE ZOOM LINK**
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
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Jan
27
Sarah B. Rodriguez - “Skillful attendance during labor itself”: Maternal Mortality and the State, 1750-1990"
Evanston - 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Speaker
Sara Rodriguez - Global Health, Northwestern University
Title
Skillful attendance during labor itself : Maternal Mortality and the State, 1750-1990"
Abstract
In 1987, following the first global conference on maternal mortality, the United Nations launched the Safe Motherhood Initiative (SMI), a global campaign to reduce maternal deaths. A core part of this effort was for more births to be assisted by skilled attendants. Though it was not until 1987 that a global conference was held on ways to reduce maternal mortality, individual countries had been attempting to do so since at least the 1750s when Spain, for example, required midwives to pass an oral exam and be licensed by the state. During the more than 200 years between Spain s actions and the launching of the SMI, a central focus of state and then global efforts to reduce maternal deaths has been on training and regulating birth attendants. In this talk, I will consider this history through a series of cases illustrative of the concentration on the training and oversight of childbirth attendants, themselves most often female. I will further consider how these two interventions arose from and reinforced the medicalization of childbirth, and how they arose from and reinforced the belief that a route for a state modernizing was through the oversight of female bodies.
Biography
Sarah B. Rodriguez is a medical historian who focuses on the history of women s reproductive health since the early 20th century, the history of clinical care, and the history of clinical research ethics. Her most recent book is The Love Surgeon: A Story of Trust, Harm, and the Limits of Medical Regulation. Rodriguez is currently working on the history of maternal mortality as a global health concern.
Feb
06
Against Our Will: Protest and Resistance in Eating Disorder Discourse - Alice Weinreb
Chicago - 12:00 PM - 12:45 PM
The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics Program
Presents
A Montgomery Lecture
With
Alice Weinreb, PhD
Associate Professor of History
Loyola University, Chicago
Against Our Will:
Protest and Resistance in Eating Disorder Discourse
This talk focuses on the ways in which eating disorders, especially anorexia nervosa, were constructed as sites of resistance during the 1970s and 1980s. I explore claims that anorexia nervosa was a variant of hunger strike and thus a form of political protest. I then examine medical writing about anorexic patients as uniquely resistant to treatment, suggesting that the politicization of anorexia impacted not only popular understandings of the sickness but treatment modalities, with far-reaching implications for bioethical debates over forced feeding and coerced treatment for mental illnesses.
This lecture is open to the public and will be held in the Searle Seminar Room in the Lurie Research Building (303 E Superior), Chicago Campus. For those outside the Chicago area and anyone who would prefer to attend remotely, a Zoom option is also available.
** PLEASE REGISTER TO RECEIVE THE ZOOM LINK**
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
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Feb
20
Surgical Ethics and the Future of Surgical Practice - Peter Angelos
Chicago - 12:00 PM - 12:45 PM
The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics Program
Presents
A Montgomery Lecture
With
Peter Angelos, MD, PhD, FACS, MAMSE, HEC-C
Linda Kohler Anderson Professor of Surgery and Surgical Ethics
Director, MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics
Chief, Endocrine Surgery
The University of Chicago
Surgical Ethics and the Future of Surgical Practice
Exploration of the distinctive features of surgical ethics with particular attention on the patient-surgeon relationship and the importance of trust in surgical informed consent.
This lecture is open to the public and will be held in the Searle Seminar Room in the Lurie Research Building (303 E Superior), Chicago Campus. For those outside the Chicago area and anyone who would prefer to attend remotely, a Zoom option is also available.
** PLEASE REGISTER TO RECEIVE THE ZOOM LINK**
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
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Mar
06
Drawing Health: Fifteen Years of Graphic Medicine - MK Czerwiec
Chicago - 12:00 PM - 12:45 PM
The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics Program
Presents
A Montgomery Lecture
With
MK Czerwiec, RN, MA
Drawing Health: Fifteen Years of Graphic Medicine
This lecture will include an update from the field of graphic medicine, that is, the intersection of the medium of comics and the discourse of medicine. MK will share excerpts from her book-in-progress, a tribute to the work of cartoonist Lynda Barry as it relates to the uses of comics in health care.
This lecture is open to the public and will be held in the Searle Seminar Room in the Lurie Research Building (303 E Superior), Chicago Campus. For those outside the Chicago area and anyone who would prefer to attend remotely, a Zoom option is also available.
** PLEASE REGISTER TO RECEIVE THE ZOOM LINK**
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
Read more about this series | Sign up for lecture announcements