The University of Colorado Center for Bioethics and Humanities (CBH) is seeking highly qualified candidates for a full-time faculty position at the rank of Associate or full Professor to serve as Director for Clinical Ethics. The CBH Director for Clinical Ethics serves as a lead ethics consultant at both Children’s Hospital Colorado and University of Colorado Hospital and is a vital link, leader and resource for advancing the work of clinical ethics across the Anschutz Medical Campus, at affiliated institutions, and for hospitals and health systems regionally.

The CBH Director for Clinical Ethics is responsible for the Center’s work related to clinical ethics, including developing and testing strategies for innovation, evaluation and coordination of ethics consultation services. A key aim for this position is to build ethical awareness among all clinical faculty and staff and to achieve continuous improvement in the quality of ethics consultation services provided at all University-affiliated clinical sites while also serving as a resource regionally and nationally on clinical ethics consultation. On the Anschutz Medical Campus, the Director works in close coordination with chairpersons of Ethics Committees, hospital Medical Directors for Ethics and other ethics service line leaders, other CBH leaders, and senior executive leadership at clinical sites to achieve these goals.

The ideal candidate will have extensive training and experience in ethics consultation and moral distress rounds for pediatrics, maternal-fetal, and adult medicine in both inpatient and outpatient settings. This is a leadership position with significant administrative responsibilities and candidates must have significant prior leadership experience, preferably including national involvement in ethics consultation QI efforts as well as research and teaching related to clinical ethics.   

Clinical Ethics at the University of Colorado

Children’s Hospital Colorado (CHCO) is among the top 10 children’s hospitals in the nation. It has a flourishing ethics program, including providing support for clinical ethics consultations across a statewide network of care. The multidisciplinary CHCO ethics committee is chaired by a physician ethicist and a full-time nurse ethicist. The CHCO Ethics Consult Service is a sub-committee of the ethics committee with about a dozen trained volunteers led by 4 trained ethics leads, all with advanced degrees in ethics and HEC-C certification. The ethics program also manages moral distress rounds and a robust ethics liaison program with ethics representatives on most of the floors, clinics, and services. Several key hospital programs include embedded ethicists, working directly with clinical teams to develop ethics policies and frameworks to guide difficult clinical decisions, such as around Maternal-Fetal Medicine and fetal patients with renal agenesis, bariatric surgery, gender affirmation, and care for NICU patients with Trisomy 13 and 18. The ethics program is also responsible for provider and staff clinical ethics education, including through monthly Pediatrics Ethics Grand Rounds and a yearly Pediatric Ethics Conference. An example of clinical ethics programming that spans the pediatric and adult hospitals is the embedded ethicist for the Colorado Fetal Care Center, which is located at the Children’s Hospital Colorado and incorporates MFM faculty from the University of Colorado Hospital.

The University of Colorado Hospital is part of UCHealth and is consistently ranked the #1 hospital in the state of Colorado. The hospital has a robust multidisciplinary ethics committee that is responsible for policy development and ethics education, including through monthly committee meetings, monthly Ethics Grand Rounds, and quarterly meetings with ethics committee chairs from around the UCHealth System. The ethics program has a cadre of active Ethics Ambassadors who conduct education and research in clinical settings and Moral Resilience Ambassadors to help address moral distress throughout the hospital. The program also features ethicists embedded in various programs to develop policies and frameworks to guide difficult clinical decisions, including on the UCHospital Pharmacy & Therapeutics Committee, UCHealth Guardianship Committee, and for the UCHealth Physician Proxy process. The Ethics Consultation Service is a clinical consultation service that coordinates closely with the Ethics Committee, offering clinical ethics consultations, case-based moral distress rounds, and proactive moral resiliency trainings. The consultation service has 5 leads, some with advanced degrees in ethics and HEC-C certification, and 3 trained volunteers from the UCH Ethics Committee.

The University of Colorado Center for Bioethics and Humanities (CBH), housed in the Fulginiti Pavilion for Bioethics and Humanities at the heart of the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus, is one of the nation’s top bioethics and humanities centers. It provides core infrastructure and support for the clinical ethics programs at CHCO and UC Hospital, as well as excellent research, teaching and policy development resources. The CBH provides direct connections to The Colorado School of Public Health and the University of Colorado’s College of Nursing, School of Dental Medicine, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Graduate School on the Anschutz Medical Campus as well as to multiple other campuses, centers and programs of the University of Colorado. The CBH supports particularly robust and growing opportunities in child abuse prevention advocacy (via The Kempe Center) and rural health care (via AHEC), and it has an excellent Arts and Humanities in Health Care program (supporting music and medicine and other creative arts programs) and a thriving Health Humanities and Health Ethics graduate certificate program. According to the interests of the candidate, the CBH can facilitate numerous opportunities to integrate clinical ethics into its work in the arts, research, policy, education and advocacy.

The candidate must be willing to relocate to the Denver area within 3 months of the start date.

Interviews for this position will begin in the winter of 2022, with a preferred start date in July 2023.  The start date is flexible and the position will remain open until filled.

Professional Field

This position is within the discipline of Clinical Ethics. Because of the span of ethics consultation work required within this position across the hospitals on the Anschutz Medical Campus, ethics training and experience are necessary in pediatrics, maternal-fetal and adult medicine.

Work to be Performed

Exact time allocations for this position are flexible according to the needs of the successful applicant. The following is an example time allocation:

• Ethics consultation at UCH and CHCO:  60% of FTE
• Administrative leadership role in the Center for Bioethics and Humanities: 10%
• Scholarship/research: 10-20% of FTE
• Outreach, educational activities or clinical work: 10-20% of FTE

Supervision Received

As the CU CBH Director for Clinical Ethics, the faculty member will report to the Director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities. The position will also be a faculty member of a Department in a School or College (e.g., the Department of Pediatrics in the School of Medicine) and will report to the Department Chair or the Chair’s designee.

Minimum Qualifications  

Applicants must meet minimum qualifications at the time of hire.

Education

• A terminal degree (PhD, MD or JD)
• Advanced training (Master’s degree or comparable) in clinical ethics. 

Certification

• Up to date ASBH HEC-C credential required or to be obtained within first year of hire. Certification must be maintained while employed in this position.

Experience

• 5+ years of documented clinical ethics consultation experience in pediatric, maternal-fetal and adult settings.
• A demonstrable record of quality scholarship and significant contributions to clinical ethics.

Preferred Qualifications

• Participation on a national level in clinical ethics projects
• Participation on a national level in moral distress mitigation projects
• Record of obtaining funding for clinical ethics activities from internal and external sources

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

To be successful in this position, candidates will:

• Have documented competency in providing clinical ethics consultation
• Have experience in clinical ethics in pediatric, maternal-fetal and adult settings
• Possess excellent oral and written communication and interpersonal skills in working with teams
• Have a track record of scholarship in clinical ethics
• Be eager to contribute to a diverse, multidisciplinary and interprofessional environment and motivated to build new partnerships to support this critical work.