Conference Description

The challenges nurses face today are monumental. They arise from the many expectations that come from patients and families, the institutions in which we work, and our professional identity within society. The reckoning with the global pandemic has highlighted the challenges we face including: our work environments, systemic racism, and disparities in healthcare. Recognizing and honoring what feels broken, we need to make space for meaning and healing, to consider a bigger picture and to imagine what is possible as we move ahead.

One path is through moral agency – reflecting on perceptions of right and wrong, giving voice to ethical issues, and taking steps forward. Integrating our Code of Ethics for Nurses, the new Nursing Scope and Standards of Practice, and the latest Future of Nursing Report, we acknowledge the need for an expanded discussion of ethics which embraces our roles in caring, advocacy, and promoting respect, equity, inclusion, and social justice. This conference will build ethics knowledge and skills; foster support for others in our ethical practice; address collective responses to the challenges at hand; and encourage engagement with our colleagues, institutions, and communities. In our pursuits to learn more, we honor our commitment to take care of not only our patients, but one another.

Post-Conference Workshop Series –

Dates will be announced shortly.

2 hours, 2.0 CNE’s

1. A Tale of Two Stories  | Mary Gentile

2. Building and Being: Moral Agents as Creators and
    Sustainers of an Ethical Climate in Healthcare     
    Beth Epstein           

3. Beyond Moral Distress: Strengthening Nurses’ Moral Agency    
    Elizabeth Peter                                                     

4. Enhancing Moral Agency and Decreasing Moral Distress: Hospital Policy is a Viable Tool for Clinicians Brian Cyr, MSN, RN-BC, Joan Henriksen, PhD, RN and Ellen Robinson, PhD, RN