{"id":11786,"date":"2019-05-14T14:30:08","date_gmt":"2019-05-14T18:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/?p=11786"},"modified":"2019-05-14T14:31:05","modified_gmt":"2019-05-14T18:31:05","slug":"geisel-names-new-swigart-fellows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/2019\/geisel-names-new-swigart-fellows\/","title":{"rendered":"Geisel Names New Swigart Fellows"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Geisel's newest Swigart Fellow: Edel Auh \u201922, Julia Berkowitz \u201920, and Colin McLeish \u201922<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Congratulations to Geisel School of Medicine\u2019s new Swigart Fellows\u2014Edel Auh \u201922, Julia Berkowitz \u201920, and Colin McLeish \u201922.<\/p>\n

Now in its third year, the Olive M. and Joesph F. Swigart Ethic Fellowship Program is an opportunity for faculty and students to collaborate on scholarly research projects around ethics issues in patient care and medical education, and to share new knowledge with both the medical school and Dartmouth-Hitchcock. The yearlong projects have resulted in drafting several manuscripts for publication, professional conference and poster presentations, and new focuses in medical education and clinical care.<\/p>\n

Funding for the Swigart Fellowship is provided by the Olive M. and Joseph F. Swigart Fund for Practical Education in Medical Ethics, established through a bequest from Olive \u201cPolly\u201d Swigart, a teacher, and Joseph Swigart, who worked in finance. The fund reflects their shared concern for the ethical practice of medicine and their belief that training in ethics should be integral to medical education. Twenty years later, their fund continues to support ethics education\u2014a powerful example of the enduring impact of endowments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that impresses us is not only the quality of the work, but the range and importance of the ethics issues these projects are examining,\u201d says Bill Nelson, PhD, MDiv, a professor of psychiatry and of community and family medicine and The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice, who, with James Stahl, MD, MPH, an associate professor of medicine, directs the Swigart Fellowship . \u201cThe students have done a great job with their projects, which have the potential of making a difference in both clinical care and medical education.\u201d<\/p>\n

This fits with the goal of encouraging fellows to expand the understanding of healthcare ethics, Stahl says. \u201cThere is this idea that ethics only deals with birth and death issues\u2014but ethics permeates every aspect of our lives including how we deliver healthcare,\u201d he says. \u201cIt touches everything we do as physicians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pursuing his enthusiasm for philosophy and ethics in medicine, McLeish is working with Stahl on the nature of autonomy, which is essential to our understanding of how people make decisions and how physicians deliver care. \u201cThe concept of how we define autonomy is far more complex that what people understand,\u201d Stahl says. \u201cWhen we were approached with this particular project\u2014I have a background in decision science and decision theory\u2014it raised an intriguing question about identity and how we understand the ability to make choices, but the idea of it is really about a core concept central to ethics and to healthcare ethics in particular.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn decision science,\u201d Stahl notes, \u201cthere are attitudes toward risk and toward ambiguity, both of which affect people\u2019s comfort and willingness to make decisions, so digging deeper into that is an important project.\u201d<\/p>\n

By critiquing \u201cthe dominant theories of autonomy in medical ethics, many of which originate from the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant,\u201d McLeish says his goal is reconstructing a theory of autonomy that is built on Kantian ideals\u2014such as good will, sincere ethical action, and the requirement to never treat persons as means\u2014which also compels us to accept the full content of altruistic morality.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am enormously grateful to the Swigart Fellowship for the opportunity to pursue my endless curiosity about philosophy and ethics in medicine, and to share this enthusiasm alongside a faculty mentor and two of my peers,\u201d he says. \u201cI look forward to a year of rigorous study and writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though not intentional, there is an interesting overlap between Auh\u2019s research and McLeish\u2019s\u2014both are looking at decision making. Auh, who has worked as a hospital interpreter, is examining the effect of language barriers in decision making. She is working with a Dartmouth College-based medical and psychological anthropologist, Elizabeth Carpenter-Song, PhD, an adjunct associate professor of psychiatry at Geisel, who has done extensive research in how culture and bias influence decision making.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will be working with Professor Carpenter-Song studying the various challenges of effectively conveying uncertainties to patients in the presence of language barriers,\u201d Auh says. \u201cWe are particularly interested in the difficulties of obtaining proper informed consent because of these communication barriers and the roles that interpreters play in addressing these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collaborating with Matthew Duncan, MED \u201901, an assistant professor of psychiatry and an associate dean of student affairs, Berkowitz is taking on a the nationally prevalent problem of medical student and physician burnout.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe purpose of this project is to determine key barriers to mental wellness and key contributors to student burnout at Geisel, and develop implementable recommendations to Geisel faculty and administration,\u201d Berkowitz says. \u201cWe\u2019ll also present our findings to medical students with the hope of reducing stigma and the sense of isolation that exists around burnout and mental health challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am extremely grateful for the opportunity to work with Dr. Duncan through the Swigart Fellowship\u2014it would be wonderful for Geisel to be a leader in addressing this critical issue that is pervasive throughout medical education, training, and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in 2016, when Nelson and Stahl began creating the fellowship program, their goals were modest. When they launched the project, their intention was for faculty and students to get together to really explore and become knowledgeable about a specific ethical concern. Stahl notes, \u201cEach year, I am more impressed with how both faculty and students are embracing the idea and taking the lead in identifying projects that we need to begin exploring and developing new knowledge. We\u2019ve come a long way in a short time, and I hope the fellowship program continues expanding both in range of ideas and scope.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nelson says, \u201cWhen we first started constructing the program, we weren\u2019t quite sure how it would go. I echo what James said\u2014we\u2019re impressed with how students have taken on their projects and have created outcomes that are significant and important. I think the fellowship has made a difference in the lives of our students and many of them want to carry the nature of the work into their careers. Our hope is to expand the program beyond two or three fellows each year\u2014and to grow not only in substance but in recognition. So far, we are really happy with the outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congratulations to Geisel School of Medicine\u2019s new Swigart Fellows\u2014Edel Auh \u201922, Julia Berkowitz \u201920, and Colin McLeish \u201922. Now in its third year, the Olive M. and Joesph F. Swigart Ethic Fellowship Program is an opportunity for faculty and students to collaborate on scholarly research projects around ethics issues in patient care and medical education.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":11787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[274,799],"class_list":["post-11786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-medical-ethics","tag-swigart-ethics-fellowship","author-12"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/05\/swigart_fellows_2019-nc1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-346","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11786"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11792,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11786\/revisions\/11792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}