Q: When you think about “building moral community,” what comes to mind? How has your personal journey influenced your approach to building moral communities in healthcare?

I think less about agreement and more about practice—the everyday gestures and routines that make ethical life possible across difference. Moral community is difficult to build through abstract principles or ideals alone. It more often emerges through the cultivation of conditions in which people feel recognized and heard, especially when they do not share the same perspectives or experiences.
My own approach has been shaped by my work at the intersection of the humanities, medicine, and community-engaged practice. In projects I’ve led and facilitated, such as the Penn Medicine Listening Lab and Rx/Museum, ethical knowledge often emerges through attunement—through sustained, careful listening to one another and to what often goes unsaid, as well as to the histories we carry in our bodies and institutions. Building moral community requires humility, patience, and a willingness to remain open to being changed by encounters with others.

Q: What relationships have been important to you in building a moral community to support your practice?

Nurses and other frontline providers have been especially important in shaping my understanding of moral community. Their support of patients and families as they navigate uncertainty and upheaval has helped me appreciate the humanity inherent in caregiving—dimensions that are sometimes overlooked in academic research, discourse, and training.
I’ve also learned a great deal from my relationships with patients and community members, particularly those whose past experiences within healthcare settings have led them to serve on patient and family advisory councils or to volunteer in other efforts to improve care. Their perspectives on equity and dignity frequently challenge institutional narratives and assumptions, compelling us to expand our understanding of what care should feel like. Through my work with storytellers in the Penn Medicine Listening Lab, I’ve seen how community endures when reflective conversation, durable relationships, and openness to conflict and disagreement are nurtured as part of ethical life.

Q: What will your presentation at the conference focus on, and why is this topic important right now?

I’ll be offering both a closing talk and a more intimate workshop presentation. The closing will draw from my work in the medical humanities, including the Listening Lab and Rx/Museum projects. It will explore how structured and sustained practices grounded in the medical humanities can foster connection and surface ethical concerns—helping to create shared moral ground, rebuild trust, and support greater cohesion across roles and hierarchies.
The workshop will build on my teaching and ongoing conversations with colleagues in the spiritual care community and will focus on attunement as a form of ethical care: listening and attentiveness understood as collective practices that can function as moral resources within healthcare institutions.
Many people working in healthcare today are navigating conditions of moral distress, burnout, and fragmentation, often within systems under extraordinary strain. Rather than approaching ethics primarily as decision-making in discrete moments of crisis, I’m interested in how we might understand it as a relational sensibility—one that can sustain not only individuals, but also teams and communities over time.

Q: If you could give one piece of advice to a new healthcare professional about ethics and building a moral community, what would it be?

Cultivate practices of listening and reflection as seriously as you cultivate your clinical skills. Attend to what people say, to what they may be struggling to articulate, and to what feels unresolved or recurring in your own life and in the lives of those around you.
Building moral community doesn’t require having the right answers; it requires that we show up with care, curiosity, and accountability. Seek out colleagues and mentors who make space for reflection and ethical conversation, and who help you stay connected to the values that first drew you to healthcare.