Essential Ethics

Essential Ethics

The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne

Episodes 69
Avg. Duration 41m
Activity Dormant
Since Aug 2019
Latest Episode Aug 2025

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Publishing Details

Schedule
Every 2 Weeks
Format
Episodic
Hosting
feeds.megaphone.fm

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About This Podcast

Essential Ethics, from the Children’s Bioethics Centre at The Royal Children’s Hospital (Melbourne, Australia) presents discussion of challenging cases that come up when treating children. Hear the most up-to-date thinking and draw knowledge from the ethics toolkit. After a decade or more of experience our team of world-recognised ethicists takes on the hardest cases. Essential Ethics is informative, interesting and always relevant. Hosted by Professor John Massie, a clinician and bioethicist at The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne.

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Recent Episodes

Getting your heart dirty

Aug 05, 2025 53m

Caring for children with severe neurological impairments presents multiple challenges. As medical technology advances, the choices for clinicians and families grow in complexity. From…

How should we conceptualise suffering in children's healthcare?

May 19, 2025 1h 2m

Suffering is an important concept in medical practice, but it can be hard to be certain just what suffering is. This is amplified in paediatric practice when it can be hard to know when a child is…

Love your patient

May 19, 2025 36m

Tyler Tate has co-authored a wonderful paper, "Love Your Patient", which explores the lost heart of medicine that is now driven by scientific and financial imperatives. In this podcast, Tyler…

Moral distress

Apr 11, 2025 53m

Moral distress was first defined in the nursing literature (Jameton, 1984) as "the experience of knowing the right thing to do while being in a situation in which it is nearly impossible to do…

2024 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: Disentangling perspectives

Dec 23, 2024 1h 1m

Moral distress is a pervasive phenomenon in healthcare and contributes to healthcareworker burnout, turnover, and withdrawal from patient care. Dr Morley providesa brief overview of the concept of…

2024 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: Hope within despair

Dec 23, 2024 20m

Music as a therapeutic intervention is often used to transcend deficits and medical acuity, shifting instead to a strengths-based approach. Here, moments of joy are celebrated, and even the smallest…

2024 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: When words fail

Dec 23, 2024 24m

Talking about stressful situations can give rise to euphemisms. Coded language can help smooth harsh realities or create a bond when it’s shared by a team. But in healthcare, when it stigmatises the…

2024 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: Beyond distress and dilemma

Dec 23, 2024 50m

Bioethics, as an applied form of ethics, is concerned with clinical problems and decision-making. This makes sense because healthcare takes action to resolve challenges in preventing and treating…

2023 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: High cost and novel therapies

Nov 08, 2024 15m

Associate Professor Tom Connell speaks about the challenges faced by large children's hospitals with the availability of high cost new drugs. Speaker: Associate Professor Tom Connell, RCH Chief of…

2023 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: Gender affirming care

Nov 08, 2024 18m

Dr Daniel Wright explores innovation in the light of gender affirming care for children with gender dysphoria. Daniel shows us how philosophy can help de-pathologise issues such as gender dysphoria,…

2023 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: Hope, Humility and Innovation

Nov 08, 2024 46m

One of Australia's leading clinical ethicists, Professor Ian Kerridge, brings together storytelling, clinical experience and philosophy to help us navigate a path through the complexity of innovation…

2023 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: Rethinking innovation

Nov 08, 2024 58m

The 2023 conference was unified by the theme of innovation. Between 2023 and 2030, there will be at least ten new and expensive therapies approved every year. But in Australia and many other nations,…

Parents vs clinicians: a path to resolution

Nov 17, 2023 57m

Parent-clinician conflict is a common reason that clinical ethicists become involved in children’s care. The genesis of the conflict is often quite early in the course of the child’s illness and the…

13th National Paediatric Bioethics Conference 2022: Friends of the CBC hypothetical

Aug 31, 2023 56m

A hypothetical case discussion sponsored by the Friends of the Children's Bioethics Centre Auxiliary. "Nadia" is a 15-year-old girl with cystic fibrosis who needs a permanent intravenous infusion…

13th National Paediatric Bioethics Conference 2022: Abandoned or relinquished? Challenges for hospital staff

Aug 24, 2023 22m

Jack Southwell, a Social Worker at RCH, describes the moral environment when looking after a child left in the care of the hospital. He discusses the technical differences between abandonment and…

13th National Paediatric Bioethics Conference 2022: Vaccinating young people against parental wishes

Aug 17, 2023 28m

An expert panel explores the issues that arise when young people request vaccination for COVID-19 against the wishes of their parents. Dr Veronica Cerrati presents a case of a 14-year-old girl with…

Classic Conundrum: Children as haematopoietic stem cell donors: The role of an advocate

Aug 15, 2023 40m

Haematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation has become the standard treatment for a range of diseases in children and adults. Children, sometimes as young as six months of age may be asked to act…

13th National Paediatric Bioethics Conference 2022: Addressing conflict: an introduction to empathic curiosity

Aug 11, 2023 59m

Professor Jodi Halpern introduces the audience to empathic curiosity, a concept that she has developed through her work in psychiatry, paediatrics and clinical ethics. Prof Halpern explains how…

Deciding with Children S2 Ep4: Beyond Disability

Apr 09, 2023 45m

In the clinical care of children who have a disability, the processes of deciding with children can present different challenges. Children who have a disability may have limited ability to understand…

Deciding with Children S2 Ep3: Finding My Voice

Apr 02, 2023 37m

Transition to adult services is an important step for patients who have been cared for in a children’s hospital or by a paediatrician. This is a process (transition) rather than an event (transfer)…

Frequently Asked Questions

How many episodes does Essential Ethics have?

Essential Ethics has published 69 episodes since August 2019, covering topics in Health & Fitness, Medicine.

Is Essential Ethics still active?

Essential Ethics is currently dormant with new episodes every 2 weeks. Average episode length is 41m.

How do I contact Essential Ethics for sponsorship or guest appearances?

Sign up on Grep.FM to access contact details for Essential Ethics, including email and social media links.

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