Category: Registration
Desk registration opened at Auditorium Hall (CHUV)
Category: Parallel sessions
Pre-Conference Workshops – June 4, 2025
Category: Break
Category: Registration
Desk registration opened at Palais de Rumine
Category: Pre-conferences
Public conference at Palais de Rumine : Gender dysphoria in minors: The role of medicine and clinical ethics
Category: Social Program
Location : Atrium of Palais de Rumine
Category: Registration
Desk registration opened at Auditorium Hall (CHUV)
Category: Posters
The following posters will be displayed throughout the day at the congress venue :
Location: César-Roux
Speakers :
Ralf J. Jox, chairman of ICCEC 2025
Mirela Caci, Vice medical director, Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV)
Patrick Bodenmann, Vice dean, Faculty of Biology and Medicine, University of Lausanne
Arnaud Perrier, President of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences
Location: César-Roux
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Mark Aulisio
Location: Alexandre Yersin
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Annina Seiler
Location: Auguste Tissot
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Stella Reiter-Theil
Location: Mathias Mayor
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Silviya Aleksandrova-Yankulovska
Location: Maternité
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Placid Nicod
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Séminaire 3
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Andros
Category: Parallel sessions
Category: Break
Location: César-Roux
Category: Plenary
Speakers :
- Richard Huxtable
- Sarah Barclay
- Anna Hirsch
- Julia Palmiano Federer
Abstracts :
Richard Huxtable, Is there any alternative…? Identifying, avoiding, and addressing conflict
Despite even best efforts to hear and heed alternative perspectives, conflicts can sometimes arise in the clinical setting between (and among) clinicians, patients, and people close to the patient. The nature, sources, and complexities of conflicts vary, as do the various means of avoiding or addressing them. In this presentation, I will reflect on research undertaken with Louise Austin and Harleen Johal, in which we examined conflicts arising in England and Wales in “best interests” decision-making for patients, of all ages, who lack the capacity or competence to make decisions for themselves. The projects respectively focused on conflicts in paediatrics, especially paediatric intensive care, and in adult intensive care. In both settings, five approaches tended to be prominent, which involved looking to: the team; second (or more) opinions; clinical ethics support services; mediators; or the courts. We found that each had their merits, but also presented problems. I close with some reflections on the further work that is needed to understand not only which approaches are being used (and when and by whom), but also which should be used (and when and by whom).
Anna Hirsch, Autonomy and well-being in patient care: How philosophical analysis can provide guidance in cases of conflict
Ethical conflicts that arise in patient care and are discussed in clinical ethics (consultations) often involve conflicting values, norms, and obligations. For example, the obligation to benefit a patient (from a medical-professional point of view) may conflict with the obligation to respect the patient’s autonomy – highlighting a conflict between the values of well-being and autonomy. In order to deal with these conflicts in an ethically sound way, it is necessary to be sufficiently clear about what it actually means to promote patients’ autonomy and to protect and foster their well-being. One approach often referred to in clinical ethics is the four-principles model of Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress. While this approach can be helpful in identifying ethical conflicts and drawing attention to key obligations in patient care, it often remains too vague regarding the interpretation of core concepts on which it is based on, particularly “autonomy” and “well-being.” As a result, in ethically very complex situations, the model offers limited guidance on how to interpret and weigh these obligations. In my talk, I will argue that more sophisticated philosophical theories and concepts can compensate for the conceptual shortcomings of the four-principles model. Drawing on a concrete case study, I will illustrate how such concepts and theories can deepen our understanding of autonomy and well-being in the context of patient care. This, in turn, can enhance our ability to analyse conflicts and provides arguments for specifying and balancing competing obligations. In this way, I contend, philosophical theories and concepts can contribute to robust and ethically well-founded decisions in clinical ethics (counselling).
Sarah Barclay, Recognising, understanding and managing conflict in paediatric healthcare: reflections on the use and impact of mediation skills to support the management and de-escalation of conflict between families and health professionals.
Conflict between parents/families and health professionals about the care and treatment of a sick child has become a significant phenomenon in paediatric healthcare. Research by the Medical Mediation Foundation found that conflict was prevalent across paediatric specialties, and particularly in neurology, general paediatrics and neonatology. The four key causes identified were communication breakdown, disagreements about treatment, unrealistic expectations/ “excessive” healthcare demands and families wishing to micromanage care.
The impact of conflict can be significant and damaging for families and professionals alike, involving considerable amounts of staff time, fracturing of working relationships and a loss of focus on the child.
Providing clinicians with the confidence and skills to recognise the warning signs of conflict and use mediation skills to help engage in conversations with families when conflict has arisen, have been shown to support both early recognition of conflict and its de-escalation.
In this presentation I will offer some reflections on working with clinicians and families where communication breakdown and conflict have had on working relationships between family and professionals. I will also discuss how embedding the use of mediation skills in clinical teams can support families and professionals alike in navigating challenging conversations in which entrenched positions are having a negative impact on shared decision-making and constructive dialogue.
Julia Palmiano Federer, Resolving conflicts in our society: Applying international conflict resolution practices to the hospital
This input collapses interdisciplinary boundaries and discusses how conflict resolution practices developed to address situations of violent political armed conflict can be applied to intercultural and political conflicts in public health and hospital settings.
The input will first introduce the basics of conflict resolution mechanisms such as peace negotiations and mediation. It will then delve into specific tools for conflict resolution practitioners such as “conflict analysis,” and “process design.” In particular, the input will draw from Dr. Palmiano Federer’s research and practice supporting and studying mediation processes in several armed conflict settings, for instance in Myanmar and the Philippines.
The input will end by arguing that the techniques and practices of conflict resolution can be applied to other sectors including public health, as the challenges that our global society faces (e.g. the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, systemic racism, climate change, and other pressing public health issues) are interconnected. These challenges exacerbate as well as create new conflicts that negatively affect the communities that we serve.
Moderator : Ralf J. Jox
Please access the full description here
Category: Break
Category: Posters
Meeting point for each poster tour is at the first poster being presented.
The following posters will be presented by their authors during a guided poster walk :
Clinical ethics around the world (moderation: Jürg Streuli)
Challenges in clinical ethics (moderation: Natalia Amasiadi)
Conflict resolution (moderation: Nicolas Foureur)
Location: César-Roux
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Renzo Pegoraro
Location: Alexandre Yersin
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Jürgen Wallner
Location: Auguste Tissot
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Dario Sacchini
Location: Mathias Mayor
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Pernilla Pergert
Location: Jequier-Doge
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Placid Nicod
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Paros
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Andros
Category: Parallel sessions
Category: Break
Location: César-Roux
Category: Plenary
Speakers :
- Kristina Würth
- Kevin Dzi
- Nancy Berlinger
- Rainer Tan
Abstracts :
Kevin Dzi and Kristina Wurth
The relevance of racism in and for healthcare is immense and goes far beyond the level of individual action. At the same time, racism is a topic that provokes strong defensive reactions, is emotionally charged, and is often exploited for populist purposes. While it seems difficult for some to talk about racism and to acknowledge the existence of racist mechanisms in our societies, the issue of implicit bias is less emotionally charged and has been studied in several areas of healthcare and medicine—such as gender medicine and migrant health—revealing alarming results. In this presentation, we will explore what we mean when we speak of racism, taking into account societal and local contexts, as well as historical dimensions. We will then discuss ethical and philosophical aspects and conclude with a look at current data.
Nancy Berlinger, Plan, Safeguard, Care: An Ethical Framework for Health Care Institutions Concerning Patients, Caregivers, and Staff Who Are Migrants
Every person needs some way to receive health care should they need it, in the place where they are. Health care institutions such as hospitals and clinics meet basic human needs by providing essential services that save lives, restore health, or manage symptoms. Yet whether and how health care institutions should provide access to health care for migrant individuals and populations is frequently unclear. These perennial challenges are intensified during periods of social and political uncertainty or turmoil concerning migration. This presentation will offer an ethical framework, grounded in familiar principles of public health and healthcare ethics and based on pandemic-era guidance developed by The Hastings Center, for healthcare institutions in different regions to explore and adapt.
Rainer Tan, Migration Health and Strategies for Equitable Care
Asylum seekers and refugees encounter significant and multifaceted barriers to healthcare, including limited health literacy, unfamiliarity with healthcare systems, linguistic challenges, medical mistrust, and discrimination. These populations also face a disproportionate burden of health issues, such as mental health disorders, infectious diseases, and worse sexual and reproductive health outcomes. The migration journey itself—along with precarious resettlement conditions—intensifies these vulnerabilities, underscoring the need to address structural determinants of health. This presentation will examine these challenges and highlight strategies implemented in Switzerland aimed at promoting health equity for migrant populations.
Moderator : Brenda Bogaert and Rachel Rutz
Please access the full description here
Category: Social Program
Location : Auditorium Hall, CHUV
Link to detailed information
Category: Registration
Desk registration opened at Auditorium Hall (CHUV)
Category: Posters
The following posters will be displayed throughout the day at the congress venue :
Location: César-Roux
Category: Plenary
Speakers :
- Nikola Biller-Andorno
- Karin Jongsma
- Georg Starke
Abstracts :
Nikola Biller-Andorno, Clinical ethics and articifial intelligence: navigating a complex relationship
This keynote explores the evolving relationship between clinical ethics and artificial intelligence (AI), highlighting how AI may both support and challenge ethical practice in healthcare. It argues that while AI can assist with tasks like case summarization and provide useful tools for research and training, we cannot outsource moral judgment without compromising our human moral agency. The talk examines which elements of clinical ethics can be technologically supported and where human involvement remains indispensable. It also considers how clinical ethics can shape responsible AI use in medicine, focusing on triage and decision-support as use cases. The conclusion underscores the need for human responsibility, ethical oversight, and ongoing education to avoid overreliance on AI and to preserve the relational and interpretive nature of ethical reasoning in clinical care.
Karin Jongsma, In favour of the Personalized Patient Preference Predictor (P4)
When patients lose capacity, their surrogates often struggle to guess what they would have wanted and many feel overwhelmed by the burden of deciding alone.
In this talk, I will introduce a possible way to address these issues of surrogate decision-making: the Personalized Patient Preference Predictor (P4). This hypothetical model for predicting patient preferences would harness advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) to create large language models (LLMs) adapted to (that is, fine-tuned on) a person-specific corpus of text. The result would be a kind of ‘digital psychological twin’ of the person that could be queried in real-time as to the patient’s most likely preferences for treatment in any given healthcare crisis.
In this presentation, I will briefly outline the technical progress that can make the P4 possible, the problems it can address and outline the reasons in favour of employing the P4.
Georg Starke, Personalized predictors or preference parrots? A critical view on digital psychological twins for determining patients’ preferences
The idea of a personalized patient preference predictor (P4) has been prominently discussed in the past year. Supposedly such a P4, based on person-specific text, can reliably predict patients’ likely preferences, informing surrogate decision making for patients lacking capacity. In this talk, I will highlight some of the concerns surrounding this approach. In particular, I will discuss issues that relate to fundamental technical limitations of current large language models (LLMs) as well as to new ethical challenges that may arise from introducing a P4 into clinical practice. Finally, I will also shed light on broader inadvertent negative consequences of integrating AI into end-of-life decision making, offering further reasons why, at least for the time being, we may want to refrain from employing a P4 in clinical settings.
Moderator : Audrey Lebret
Please access the full description here
Category: Break
Location: César-Roux
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Stella Reiter-Theil
Location: Alexandre Yersin
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Mark Aulisio
Location: Auguste Tissot
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Dario Sacchini
Location: Mathias Mayor
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Anne Slowther
Location: Charlotte Olivier
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Annina Seiler
Location: Maternité
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Rosamond Rhodes
Location: Jequier-Doge
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Séminaire 2
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Séminaire 4
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Auguste Tissot
Location: Alexandre Yersin
Headed by Ehsan Shamsi Gooshki
You are all invited to download the draft WHO Guidance on Clinical Ethics and comment it online:
Category: Break
Category: Posters
Meeting point for each poster tour is at the first poster being presented.
The following posters will be presented by their authors during a guided poster walk :
Communication and the digital (moderation: Katie Wasson)
Vulnerability (moderation: Richard Huxtable)
Conceptual challenges & dilemmas (moderation: Anne Slowther)
Critical care, life & death (moderation: Marie-Eve Bouthillier)
Location: César-Roux
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Manuel Trachsel
Location: Auguste Tissot
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Renzo Pegoraro
Location: Mathias Mayor
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Stuart Finder
Location: Charlotte Olivier
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Brenda Bogaert
Location: Jequier-Doge
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Oswald Hasselmann
Location: Alexandre Yersin
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Maternité
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Paros
Category: Parallel sessions
Category: Break
Location: César-Roux
Category: Plenary
Speakers :
- Cristina Richie
- Andrew Hantel
The result of this survey, completed by congress participants, will be discussed during the session.
Please help us by filling out the survey available through this link or via below QR code (if possible by Wednesday evening).
Abstracts :
Cristina Richie
Every medical development, technique, and procedure impacts the environment through carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide emissions contribute to climate change, climate-change related health hazards, and perpetuate social determinants of health. This talk will explore ethical issues related to the carbon emissions of health care delivery in the context of the clinician-patient relationship, such as the obligation for high carbon health care systems to reduce emissions and preserving ethical standards in the therapeutic relationship. It will use the frame of Green Bioethics- an ethical methodology that synthesizes environmental and biomedical ethics- and reflect on the nature of clinical ethics in a time of climate crisis.
Andrew Hantel
Climate change has profound impacts on human health and illness while healthcare delivery produces substantial waste and emissions which propagate climate change. This talk will take the “good clinical ethics begin with good facts” approach by first outlining the impacts of climate change on human health and of clinical care on the environment, which serves as the basis for why clinical ethics should care about the climate crisis. We will then consider the overarching ethical issues that arise based on the intersection of climate and health and how clinical ethics might approach them in relation to the related fields of health policy, organizational, and research ethics.
Moderator : Rachel Rutz and Brenda Bogaert
Please access the full description here
Category: Social Program
Location : Olympic Museum, Lausanne
Link to detailed information
Category: Registration
Desk registration opened at Auditorium Hall (CHUV)
Category: Posters
These posters will be available :
Location: César-Roux
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Katie Wasson
Location: Alexandre Yersin
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Pernilla Pergert
Location: Auguste Tissot
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Marie-Eve Bouthillier
Location: Mathias Mayor
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Oswald Hasselmann
Location: Maternité
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Georg Marckmann
Location: Jequier-Doge
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Séminaire 2
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Séminaire 3
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Séminaire 4
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Paros
Category: Parallel sessions
Category: Break
Category: Posters
Meeting point for each poster tour is at the first poster being presented.
The following posters will be presented by their authors during a guided poster walk:
End of life & aid in dying (moderation: Kevin Dirksen)
Pediatrics, family and surrogate decisions (moderation: Philippe Sylvestre)
Organizational ethics (moderation: Samia Hurst)
Challenges in clinical ethics (moderation: Bert Molewijk)
Location: César-Roux
Category: Plenary
Speakers :
- Mark Aulisio
- Stella Reiter-Theil
- Laura Guidry-Grimes
Abstracts :
Mark Aulisio, Clinical ethics consultation (CEC) and socio-political context: the past, the present, and the future
This closing panel will zoom out to the bigger picture of clinical ethics consultation and its links to socio-political challenges of our time. The first part of this session will address the relationship between core competencies for clinical ethics consultation and the socio-political context in which it occurs. The format will highlight first how this has been a central part of ASBH's Core Competencies for Healthcare Ethics Consultation from its inception (1st, 2nd, and public draft of 3rd edition) and then suggest that clinical ethics consultation, indeed clinical ethics itself, is fundamentally contextual and, therefore, must remain attentive to changing features of the clinical context, particularly socio-political ones, if it is to continue to meet the kinds of needs it emerged to address.
Stella Reiter-Theil and Laura Guidry-Grimes
During the second half of the plenary, Laura Guidry-Grimes will interview Stella Reiter-Theil about her experiences and observations of the field of clinical ethics consultation, as well as the ICCEC conference series, over the years. This interview will highlight the past, present, and future of clinical ethics consultation from the perspective of clinical ethicists at different career stages. Guidry-Grimes and Reiter-Theil will discuss the sociopolitical dimensions of clinical ethics, reflecting on significant shifts in recent years that can affect health, health care, and clinical ethics work in different parts of the world. Attendees will be invited to share their experiences of the field and consider the sociopolitical aspects of their context. George Agich will moderate the discussion.
Moderator : George Agich
Please access the full description here
Location: César-Roux
Speakers : Ralf J. Jox, George Agich
Awards for the 3 best posters
Awards for the 3 best abstracts of junior researchers
Honoring Stella Reiter-Theil
Presentation of ICCEC 2026
Category: Break
Location: César-Roux
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Natalia Amasiadi
Location: Alexandre Yersin
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Antoine Payot
Location: Auguste Tissot
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Samia Hurst-Majno
Location: Mathias Mayor
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Brenda Bogaert
Location: Jequier-Doge
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Stuart Finder
Location: Maternité
Category: Parallel sessions
Moderation: Georg Agich
Location: Séminaire 2
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Séminaire 3
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Séminaire 4
Category: Parallel sessions
Location: Paros
Category: Parallel sessions