Clinical Ethics Discussion Group: Wellness Week Event

Medical students witness difficult situations well before they have any framework for processing them. Many experience moral distress, knowing something feels wrong and having no vocabulary or no way to process. This is also a documented driver of burnout for students and physicians.

The event will be a panel with physicians and members of the UNC Hospital Ethics Committee. Start with a brief introduction to moral distress, why it accumulates in trainees and those practicing. Next, panelists respond to pre-submitted and in-person questions. Panelists open up about cases that stayed with them and how they personally coped with it. Finally discuss how people request an ethics consult at UNC and other resources UNC provides.

Emotional Wellness. Hearing practicing physicians openly describe cases that still trouble them directly builds resilience by normalizing distress as an expected part of the work rather than a failure. 

Social Wellness. Small group debriefs with peers and interprofessional committee members build a felt sense of belonging to a community that shares the burden, and they establish faculty relationships students can return to.

Career Wellness. Students see what it actually looks like to practice medicine in a way that stays aligned with one’s values under real pressure in difficult ethical scenarios.

Spiritual Wellness. Physicians can discuss their spiritual practices, showing students that they have permission to bring spiritual framing into a clinical setting.

Sponsor –
UNC School of Medicine Office of Student Affairs – Wellness