Description:

How Do I Decide?:  Surrogate Decision-Making in Practice - Debjani Mukherjee

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics

presents

A Montgomery Lecture

Debjani Mukherjee, PhD
Director, Donnelley Ethics Program, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab
Associate Professor, Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and Medical Education
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Faculty, Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program

When clinicians ask someone to make a medical decision on behalf of another, it can be fraught with uncertainties. The uncertainties are on many levels—medical outcomes, the patient’s wishes, the relationships between the surrogate and patient. Moreover, our ability to make a “substituted judgment” or to make a decision for another as you believe they would if they could, has serious limitations. In this talk, Dr. Mukherjee, a clinical psychologist and clinical ethicist who has been involved in over 550 ethics consultations, will draw on her clinical experience and work from psychology and disability ethics to explore the contextual features of surrogate decision-making.