Essential Ethics

In this episode of Essential Ethics, recorded at the 2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference, research nurse coordinator Cat Wood from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute explores the ethical challenges of advanced therapy clinical trials for children with rare genetic conditions. Focusing on gene therapy trials for inherited epilepsy, she examines issues of consent, disability, risk, and equity in research involving children with severe neurodisability. Cat highlights the importance of meaningful engagement with patients and families, offering thoughtful insights into the ethical complexities of developing potentially life-changing therapies. 

In this episode of Essential Ethics, recorded at the 2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference, Dr Ciara Earley explores the ethical challenges that arise when parental advocacy becomes increasingly demanding. Drawing on a real-world case, she examines how clinicians can balance responding to parental concerns with maintaining focus on the child’s best interests. Dr Earley presents a practical ethical framework to help healthcare teams navigate complex family dynamics while supporting both parents and clinicians in delivering high-quality paediatric care. 

In this episode of Essential Ethics, recorded at the 2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference, nurse Elise Burn explores the impact of social media on young people living with illness. In SickTok: Adolescent Illness, Identity, Privacy and the Role of the Clinician, she examines how online platforms can shape illness identity, influence health behaviours, and create new ethical challenges for clinicians. This thought-provoking presentation highlights the complexities of supporting adolescents in an increasingly digital world. 

In this episode of Essential Ethics, recorded at the 2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference, Emeritus Professor Myra Bluebond-Langner and Professor Lynn Gillam explore the ethical importance of talking with children about serious illness and dying. Drawing on decades of research and clinical experience, they examine truth-telling, the changing role of parents, and how conversations can be centred on a child’s lived experience rather than age alone. Their presentations and discussion offer compassionate, practical insights into supporting children, families, and clinicians through some of healthcare’s most challenging conversations. 

In this episode of Essential Ethics, recorded at the 2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference, social workers Dani Gold and Anna Lucia examine the ethical consequences of how family violence is documented in healthcare records. In If you hit someone with a frying pan, it’s not cooking, they argue that softened or minimising language can obscure harm and undermine patient dignity. Drawing on their expertise in family violence and child safety, they offer practical strategies for more accurate, respectful documentation and highlight why every response to violence carries ethical significance. 

In this episode of Essential Ethics, recorded at the 2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference, Associate Professor Rosalind McDougall explores how we can make better ethical decisions in clinical practice. Drawing on a real case, she examines the strengths and limitations of ethical theory in time-pressured healthcare settings and argues for the importance of practical wisdom, collaboration, and decision-making. Central to her presentation is the concept of epistemic humility—an openness to learning from others and recognising the limits of one’s own knowledge—as a key ingredient for effective clinical ethics deliberation. 

In this opening keynote of the 2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference, Professor John McMillan from the Bioethics Centre at the University of Otago explores how clinical ethicists can be most useful in healthcare.

In Socrates in the clinic: the role of ethical analysis in healthcare, he challenges the dominance of ethical theories and principles, arguing that good ethics is not always good philosophy. Through practical examples and thought-provoking insights, McMillan offers a fresh perspective on ethical analysis and decision-making in clinical practice. 

Moral distress is a pervasive phenomenon in healthcare and contributes to healthcare worker burnout, turnover, and withdrawal from patient care. Dr Morley provides a brief overview of the concept of moral distress and, through a series of cases, disentangles stakeholders' perspectives and concepts related to moral distress. She argues that moral compromise is central to alleviating the negative effects of moral distress and successful moral compromise requires a willingness to understand others' perspectives and values.

Presenter: Dr Georgina Morley, Nurse Ethicist and Director of the Nursing Ethics Program at the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, USA. Host: Prof John Massie, Children's Bioethics Centre, The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne.

Caring for children with severe neurological impairments presents multiple challenges. As medical technology advances, the choices for clinicians and families grow in complexity. From life-prolonging interventions to deeply personal decisions, tensions and disagreements often arise, with emotions running high. In this episode, we explore the ethical considerations across this high-stakes area of paediatric care and offer a practical toolkit to help clinicians navigate difficult decisions with confidence, compassion and clarity.

Host: Prof John Massie

Guests:

Dr Zoë McCallum, Paediatrician, Department of Neurodevelopment & Disability at The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne .

Clinical Associate Professor Giuliana Antolovich, Paediatrician and Clinical Stream Leader, Physical Disability, Neurodevelopment & Disability at The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne.

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 suffering, especially if that child is a newborn, is pre-verbal or has severe developmental delay. In this episode we explore a new account of suffering that helps clinicians towards a consistent approach to the sick child and their family.

Host: Prof John Massie

Guests:

Clin Assoc Prof Tyler Tate, Palliative Care Physician at Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital, California and the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University

Dr Georgina Hall, Clinical Ethicist - Children’s Bioethics Centre at The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne