Medical & Surgical Decisions in Critically Ill Patients: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Challenging Ethical Issues

The University of Chicago Center in Beijing
20th floor, Culture Plaza
No. 59A Zhong Guan Cun Street
Haidian District Beijing 100872

The ethical issues confronting physicians in contemporary medical practice continue to grow. For some challenging clinical situations there are clear standards of care that guides the clinical decisions. However, in ethically challenging situations, there are frequently not clear answers about what is the best way to proceed. We propose to explore these gray areas where the ethically optimal approach is not clear to consider how different cultural assumptions affect the recommendations that clinicians make for their patients. We believe that an international conference to explore these issues in Beijing and Hong Kong will prove to be beneficial for all participants to understand different approaches to ethically challenging clinical situations.