PODCAST · health
Essential Ethics
by The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne
Essential Ethics, from the Children’s Bioethics Centre at The Royal Children’s Hospital (Melbourne, Australia) presents discussion of challenging cases that come up when treating children. Hear the most up-to-date thinking and draw knowledge from the ethics toolkit. After a decade or more of experience our team of world-recognised ethicists takes on the hardest cases. Essential Ethics is informative, interesting and always relevant. Hosted by Professor John Massie, a clinician and bioethicist at The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne.
Episodes
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2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: Ethics of children with rare diseases and the resulting disability participating in commercially sponsored advanced therapy clinical trials
In this episode of Essential Ethics, recorded at the 2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference, research nurse coordinator Cat Wood from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute explores the ethical challenges of advanced therapy clinical trials for children with rare genetic conditions....
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2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: “The Squeaky Wheel,” an ethical approach to finding the balance between addressing parental concerns and managing excessive demands
In this episode of Essential Ethics, recorded at the 2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference, Dr Ciara Earley explores the ethical challenges that arise when parental advocacy becomes increasingly demanding. Drawing on a real-world case, she examines how clinicians can balance responding to...
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2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: SickTok - Adolescent illness identity, privacy, and the role of the clinician
In this episode of Essential Ethics, recorded at the 2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference, nurse Elise Burn explores the impact of social media on young people living with illness. In SickTok: Adolescent Illness, Identity, Privacy and the Role of the Clinician, she examines how online...
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2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: Talking with children about illness and dying
In this episode of Essential Ethics, recorded at the 2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference, Emeritus Professor Myra Bluebond-Langner and Professor Lynn Gillam explore the ethical importance of talking with children about serious illness and dying. Drawing on decades of research and…
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2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: If you hit someone with a frying pan, it’s not cooking!!!
In this episode of Essential Ethics, recorded at the 2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference, social workers Dani Gold and Anna Lucia examine the ethical consequences of how family violence is documented in healthcare records. In If you hit someone with a frying pan, it’s not cooking, they...
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2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: How can we make better ethical decisions in practice?
In this episode of Essential Ethics, recorded at the 2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference, Associate Professor Rosalind McDougall explores how we can make better ethical decisions in clinical practice. Drawing on a real case, she examines the strengths and limitations of ethical theory…
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2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: Socrates in the clinic
In this opening keynote of the 2025 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference, Professor John McMillan from the Bioethics Centre at the University of Otago explores how clinical ethicists can be most useful in healthcare. In Socrates in the clinic: the role of ethical analysis in healthcare, he...
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2024 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: Disentangling perspectives
Moral distress is a pervasive phenomenon in healthcare and contributes to healthcare worker burnout, turnover, and withdrawal from patient care. Dr Morley provides a brief overview of the concept of moral distress and, through a series of cases, disentangles stakeholders' perspectives and…
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Getting your heart dirty
Caring for children with severe neurological impairments presents multiple challenges. As medical technology advances, the choices for clinicians and families grow in complexity. From life-prolonging interventions to deeply personal decisions, tensions and disagreements often arise, with emotions...
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How should we conceptualise suffering in children's healthcare?
Suffering is an important concept in medical practice, but it can be hard to be certain just what suffering is. This is amplified in paediatric practice when it can be hard to know when a child is suffering, especially if that child is a newborn, is pre-verbal or has severe developmental delay.…
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Love your patient
Tyler Tate has co-authored a wonderful paper, "Love Your Patient", which explores the lost heart of medicine that is now driven by scientific and financial imperatives. In this podcast, Tyler explains his paper and makes a call to all clinicians to orient their practice towards regarding their...
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Moral distress
Moral distress was first defined in the nursing literature (Jameton, 1984) as "the experience of knowing the right thing to do while being in a situation in which it is nearly impossible to do it". This was seen as a departure from the somewhat academic philosophical concepts of bioethical...
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2024 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: Hope within despair
Music as a therapeutic intervention is often used to transcend deficits and medical acuity, shifting instead to a strengths-based approach. Here, moments of joy are celebrated, and even the smallest positive responses offer parents an opportunity to connect with their child beyond the diagnosis....
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2024 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: When words fail
Talking about stressful situations can give rise to euphemisms. Coded language can help smooth harsh realities or create a bond when it’s shared by a team. But in healthcare, when it stigmatises the patient, does it have the potential to undermine their quality of care? And if the patient…
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2024 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: Beyond distress and dilemma
Bioethics, as an applied form of ethics, is concerned with clinical problems and decision-making. This makes sense because healthcare takes action to resolve challenges in preventing and treating illness. But by focusing on dilemmas and moral distress, we sometimes lose sight of patients––and…
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2023 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: High cost and novel therapies
Associate Professor Tom Connell speaks about the challenges faced by large children's hospitals with the availability of high cost new drugs. Speaker: Associate Professor Tom Connell, RCH Chief of Medicine. Host: Professor John Massie, Children's Bioethics Centre, The Royal Children's Hospital...
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2023 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: Gender affirming care
Dr Daniel Wright explores innovation in the light of gender affirming care for children with gender dysphoria. Daniel shows us how philosophy can help de-pathologise issues such as gender dysphoria, yet still leave room for treatment, innovative or routine. Speaker: Daniel Wright, Clinical...
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2023 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: Hope, Humility and Innovation
One of Australia's leading clinical ethicists, Professor Ian Kerridge, brings together storytelling, clinical experience and philosophy to help us navigate a path through the complexity of innovation in health care. Speaker: Professor Ian Kerridge, haematologist and specialist in bone marrow...
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2023 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference: Rethinking innovation
The 2023 conference was unified by the theme of innovation. Between 2023 and 2030, there will be at least ten new and expensive therapies approved every year. But in Australia and many other nations, these won't necessarily be funded. Furthermore, there will be off-licence requests to use these...
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Parents vs clinicians: a path to resolution
Parent-clinician conflict is a common reason that clinical ethicists become involved in children’s care. The genesis of the conflict is often quite early in the course of the child’s illness and the situation builds to a crisis when there is a difficult decision to be made. Clinicians and…
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13th National Paediatric Bioethics Conference 2022: Friends of the CBC hypothetical
A hypothetical case discussion sponsored by the Friends of the Children's Bioethics Centre Auxiliary. "Nadia" is a 15-year-old girl with cystic fibrosis who needs a permanent intravenous infusion device to facilitate her treatment. Her parents, of Indian heritage, are unwilling to agree to this....
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13th National Paediatric Bioethics Conference 2022: Abandoned or relinquished? Challenges for hospital staff
Jack Southwell, a Social Worker at RCH, describes the moral environment when looking after a child left in the care of the hospital. He discusses the technical differences between abandonment and relinquishment but posits that there is no real difference for staff. The child left in hospital care...
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13th National Paediatric Bioethics Conference 2022: Vaccinating young people against parental wishes
An expert panel explores the issues that arise when young people request vaccination for COVID-19 against the wishes of their parents. Dr Veronica Cerrati presents a case of a 14-year-old girl with type-1 diabetes requesting a COVID vaccine from her GP. Associate Prof Margie Danchin explains the...
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Classic Conundrum: Children as haematopoietic stem cell donors: The role of an advocate
Haematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation has become the standard treatment for a range of diseases in children and adults. Children, sometimes as young as six months of age may be asked to act as HSC donors, usually for their siblings. This is because siblings are most likely to be an ‘HLA...
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13th National Paediatric Bioethics Conference 2022: Addressing conflict: an introduction to empathic curiosity
Professor Jodi Halpern introduces the audience to empathic curiosity, a concept that she has developed through her work in psychiatry, paediatrics and clinical ethics. Prof Halpern explains how sympathy may come naturally to many clinicians but is often an unhelpful response to difficulties that...
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Deciding with Children S2 Ep4: Beyond Disability
In the clinical care of children who have a disability, the processes of deciding with children can present different challenges. Children who have a disability may have limited ability to understand the decision to be made or difficulties communicating their preferences. In this episode,...
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Deciding with Children S2 Ep3: Finding My Voice
Transition to adult services is an important step for patients who have been cared for in a children’s hospital or by a paediatrician. This is a process (transition) rather than an event (transfer) and takes both time and careful curation for the young person and their parents. The goal is to…
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Deciding with Children S2 Ep2: Is deciding with children a human right?
In paediatric practice, decision-making for children gradually shifts from parents making all the decisions for their child, in collaboration with the child’s doctors, to the young person becoming more involved in their own decision-making. This shift, which is based on an emerging autonomy in…
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Deciding with Children S2 Ep1: Determining capacity to decide and refuse
The legal system says that children generally don't have medical decision-making capacity. However, with increasing maturity comes a greater capacity to be involved. This is the basis for doctrines such as the ‘mature-minor’ and ‘Gillick competence’. By including and promoting a child early in...
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The voices of experience: the ethics of partnering with families in paediatric research
Practicing family centred care is considered best practice in paediatric clinical care, so why isn’t this widely adopted in paediatric research? The voices of experience include those of the children and families. Therefore, partnering with families in research should also be considered best...
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Are we ready for genomic newborn screening?
Genomic sequencing in newborn screening is an ethical minefield. Newborn screening started in the 1960s, initially involving only one condition: phenylketonuria. Subsequently, other diseases were added to newborn screening programs. However, newborn screening panels have evolved without true...
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Clinical ethics in paediatric nursing: 5 Advocacy in nursing: unpacking the ethics
Advocacy in healthcare is commonly characterised by ‘speaking-up’ on behalf of a patient and their family to ensure their preferences and values are considered and the best possible care is delivered. In nursing, advocacy is a professional and ethical responsibility. But what factors are at work...
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Clinical ethics in paediatric nursing: 4 Holding children for clinical procedures: necessary or not?
In any paediatric hospital on any given day children are held in order to perform clinical procedures such as taking bloods or X-rays or putting in an intravenous line for fluids. This is done for the safety of all involved and to enable clinically necessary interventions to be undertaken.…
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Clinical ethics in paediatric nursing: 3 Nursing in a pandemic
Involving the family in the care of a child in hospital is a cornerstone of good paediatric practice. This is realised by encouraging parental presence and participation in care in hospital, and through open communication and shared decision making between clinicians, parents, and the child where...
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Clinical ethics in paediatric nursing: 2 Moral distress: what is it and what do we do about it?
Moral distress occurs when an ethical wrong is perceived to be occurring, or has occurred, which a clinician feels powerless to change. We discuss a hypothetical clinical case to explore the experience of moral distress in nursing. How do you recognise moral distress, and, more importantly, what...
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Clinical ethics in paediatric nursing: 1 Recognising ethical moments in nursing
In paediatric care, nurses are faced with everyday ethical decisions that impact them and their patients. Whether it’s resolving conflicting views about treatment, disclosing diagnostic results to parents, or determining care priorities, all test personal and professional values. An understanding...
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12th National Paediatric Bioethics Conference 2021: When parents exclude the adolescent in decision-making: International perspectives
The session considers some case examples where ‘deciding with children’ isn’t ethically straightforward. When parents exclude an adolescent from being involved, or when parents disagree with their child’s views, clinicians must decide when and how to advocate for a child to decide. When and why...
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12th National Paediatric Bioethics Conference 2021: Bringing it all together, Part III: Professor Clare Delany
In part 3 of the conference wrap-up, we hear a fascinating concluding presentation from Professor Clare Delany, Clinical Ethicist at The Royal Children’s Hospital and Peter McCallum Cancer Centre. Clare challenges the audience to consider the child’s ability to participate in their medical...
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12th National Paediatric Bioethics Conference 2021: Bringing it all together, Part II: Professor Lynn Gillam
Professor Lynn Gillam, Academic Director of the Children’s Bioethics Centre at The Royal Children’s Hospital explores what decision-making really is and what it looks like – the various models of shared decision-making that are often used in the healthcare context, who shares the authority to…
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12th National Paediatric Bioethics Conference 2021: Bringing it all together, Part I: Professor John Massie
Clinical Director of the Children’s Bioethics Centre, Professor John Massie, summarises some of the key messages and critical reflections on how clinicians can decide ‘with’ children in the paediatric environment. What does it really mean to seek and consider the child’s view, and what happens…
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12th National Paediatric Bioethics Conference 2021: Respecting refusal. Check your privacy settings: should a child’s illness journey be shared on social media?
This session explores the challenges of respecting a child’s privacy in the age of social media. The phenomenon of ‘sharenting’, whereby parents share news and images of their child on social media is becoming increasingly common among families where children have chronic illness and disability,...
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12th National Paediatric Bioethics Conference 2021 - Keynote: Involving Children in Clinical Decision-making: Why it Matters and How Best to Do it
Professor Douglas S. Diekema (Director of Education for the Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics at Seattle Children’s Research Institute) opens the Conference by considering the ethical underpinning of the conference theme, ‘Deciding with Children’. Deciding with Children is more than a...
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Deciding with Children 6: When children with chronic disease know more than you (Type 1 Diabetes)
We explore ways to involve children and young people when managing their chronic condition, using type 1 diabetes as an example. How do the small decisions that respect the child’s preferences and values build towards an independent decision-maker? Given the level of responsibility that parents...
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Deciding with Children 5: When the Stakes are High (Oncology)
This session considers what deciding with children looks like when a child has cancer. In this one we try to operationalise deciding with children. We explore ways to engage younger children in their medical decision-making and consider what types of decisions children with cancer can be…
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Deciding with Children 4: Deciding with Adolescents
This episode explores how clinicians currently involve adolescents in their medical decision making, and how they should involve them. We unpack the tricky transitory space that exists between deciding for younger children, to deciding with these young people who have an increased capacity for...
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Deciding with Children 3: Deciding with young children
This time focusing on involving young children and early adolescents in medical decision making, we explore the transition from deciding for children to deciding with children. We consider child development and neurobiology, what things are important to children, what we can offer in terms of...
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Deciding with Children 2: Deciding with Adolescents (Gillick competence)
We analyse the Gillick decision from the UK with regard to adolescent medical decision-making and the concept of the ‘mature minor.’ We discuss the legal aspects of ‘Gillick competence’ and consider the limitations of the Gillick decision in ethical and practical terms. Finally, we consider...
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Deciding with Children 1: Introduction: Ethical theory - why listen to the child’s voice in paediatric healthcare?
In this podcast we explore the ethical underpinnings of deciding with children when providing medical care. We recognise that children of all ages have varying levels of capacity to understand and participate in medical decisions that affect their own bodies. We cover the following ethical...
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2020 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference - The Ethics of Innovative Therapies for Children with COVID-19 (Part 2)
Speakers: Prof David Archard - Chair Nuffield Council on Bioethics, UK and Dr Joe Brierley - Chair, Clinical Ethics Service and Intensivist, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London. This session is a fascinating debate in which Prof Archard advocates for the immediate needs of the sick...
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2020 National Paediatric Bioethics Conference - The Ethics of Innovative Therapies for Children with COVID-19 (Part 1)
Speakers: Prof David Archard - Chair Nuffield Council on Bioethics, UK; Dr Joe Brierley - Chair, Clinical Ethics Service and Intensivist, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London; Dr Sarah Aylett - Clinical Ethics Service and Neurologist Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London....
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Essential Ethics, from the Children’s Bioethics Centre at The Royal Children’s Hospital (Melbourne, Australia) presents discussion of challenging cases that come up when treating children. Hear the most up-to-date thinking and draw knowledge from the ethics toolkit. After a decade or more of experience our team of world-recognised ethicists takes on the hardest cases. Essential Ethics is informative, interesting and always relevant. Hosted by Professor John Massie, a clinician and bioethicist at The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne.
HOSTED BY
The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne
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How many episodes does Essential Ethics have?
Essential Ethics currently has 69 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Essential Ethics about?
Essential Ethics, from the Children’s Bioethics Centre at The Royal Children’s Hospital (Melbourne, Australia) presents discussion of challenging cases that come up when treating children. Hear the most up-to-date thinking and draw knowledge from the ethics toolkit. After a decade or more of...
How often does Essential Ethics release new episodes?
Essential Ethics has 69 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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Who hosts Essential Ethics?
Essential Ethics is created and hosted by The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne.
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