Call for Abstracts
Plurality, Power and Patient Care: The Socio-Political Dimensions of Clinical Ethics
Lausanne, Switzerland, 5-7 June 2025
Theme 2025:
Clinical ethics consultation, or healthcare ethics consultation (HEC), responds to moral uncertainty, plurality, and value conflicts in healthcare. In doing so, it transcends the borders of healthcare and touches on contentious issues of societal and political importance, such as conflicts, migration, gender identity, artificial intelligence, or climate change. Good clinical ethics must consider these broader socio-political issues, and HEC professionals may, in turn, contribute an interesting view to these socio-political debates. This conference will shed light on the socio-political dimensions of HEC, structured in 5 topics that can be addressed across all HEC activities (consultation, education, organizational & policy work, research etc.): (1) HEC and conflict resolution, (2) HEC and social justice, (3) HEC and sustainability, (4) HEC and digital disruption, and (5) HEC and its socio-political dimension in general.
Timeline:
Congress topics in detail:
1) HEC and conflict resolution:
2) HEC and social justice:
3) HEC and sustainability:
4) HEC and digital disruption:
5) HEC and its socio-political dimension in general:
We invite abstracts related to any relevant aspect of HEC, but in particular related to the above-mentioned 5 topics. During the submission we ask you to specify the topic that your abstract best fits to.
Abstract categories and format:
Abstracts can be submitted for individual oral presentations, poster presentations, or workshops for parallel sessions (90 min). All co-authors should have a relevant contribution to the work and agree with the abstract submission. There is no maximum number of co-authorships, but each person can only be presenting author for a maximum of 2 presentations (oral and poster combined). Abstracts have to be submitted in English. References should be avoided. Abbreviations have to be explained.
Individual oral or poster presentations:
Each abstract has a maximum of 300 words (excluding title but including references if necessary). The title should be concise, catchy and summarize the content. The text body should be structured. If it concerns an empirical work, it should be structured in the sections background, aims, methods, results, discussion. If it concerns a non-empirical work the structure can be of own choice.
Workshops for parallel sessions:
Each abstract has a maximum of 400 words (excluding title but including references if necessary). The title should be concise, catchy and summarize the content. The text body should be structured, but the structure can be of own choice. Workshops have to include significant interaction with the audience and specify the moderator(s). The format of the workshop may vary (e.g., panel discussion, role play, method workshop). If a workshop includes distinct presentations, each one’s content has to be briefly described. Please be aware that only a limited number of workshops can be selected due to constraints in place and time.
Abstract evaluation:
Abstracts will be evaluated anonymously by expert reviewers from the International Scientific Committee and the Swiss Advisory Board. Please pay attention to exclude any identifiable information from your abstract title and text (which will be separated from names and affiliations). Each abstract will be evaluated by at least 2 reviewers independently. The evaluation criteria include: (1) Scholarly quality and scientific rigor, (2) Originality and innovative nature, (3) Relevance to HEC, the theme and the topics of the ICCEC 2025, (4) Practical impact on health care and HEC, (5) Form of the abstract is well-structured, clearly written, and focused. The final decision will be made by the Local Organizing Committee.
We look forward to receiving your papers and abstracts and to seeing you at the 19th ICCEC!