ICCEC 2010 - International Conference on Clinical Ethics Consultation series (ICCEC 2010)

The International Conference on Clinical Ethics Consultation series (ICCEC), which this year being held in conjunction with the International Society for Clinical Bioethics (ISCB), was founded by George Agich, PhD and Professor Dr. Stella Reiter-Theil to fill the significant gap that they perceived in the field between the explosion of clinical ethics, ethics committees, and ethics consultation services around the world and the relative lack of critical and academic discussion of the many practical, institutional, and ethical issues associated with this work. The first conference was held in 2003 at the Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio. Subsequent conferences have been held at the University of Basel, Switzerland in 2005, Toronto, Canada in 2007, Rijeka, Croatia in 2008 and Taipei, Taiwan in 2009.

Each conference is organized by a local host, who oversees local arrangements. For the 2010 conference, the local host will be the Providence Center for Health Care Ethics in Portland, Oregon, USA.

In order to ensure as much dialogue and engagement among conference participants as possible, this 6th international conference will offer a variety of formats. We will also make available to each participant an ‘audience response device’ for use at different conference sessions. This will allow different sessions to begin and end with an instant polling of participant’s thoughts on the issues discussed. Although not entirely scientific, this polling will allow us to see how discussions and presentations are shaping each other’s thinking and should, for the first time, allow us as clinical ethicists to get a better idea of the diversity and continuity of thought across cultures and national boundaries. Our hope is to publish our thinking on different issues as part of the proceedings from the conference.

The theme for the 2010 conference is “the art of ethics,” to reflect the reality that clinical ethics consultation, like clinical practice, is both an art and a science. It also reflects the principle venue for the Conference: the Portland Art Museum. The conference logo is taken from the Center’s graphic depicting model for clinical ethics consultation: The pallet and brush represent the artistry of doing ethics. The colors and designs in the pallet reflect the importance roles of clinical integrity (caduseus), beneficence (hands), autonomy (people) and justice (scales) in doing clinical ethics consultation.

Portland, Oregon is easy to get to through Portland International Airport (PDX), voted the best airport in the United States for on-time arrival and departure. PDX offers direct or nonstop service to more than 100 cities worldwide, including Amsterdam, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Frankfurt, Guadalajara, Los Angeles, Newark and Tokyo.