Tobis Lecture with Dr. Christine Cassel
Department: Center for Medical Humanities
Date and Time: October 29, 2015 | 12:00 PM-1:00 PMEvent Location: HG1030
Event Details
On October 29, 2015 the UCI Medical Humanities Initiative and the UCI Program in Medical Ethics co-sponsored the first speaker in the Jerome Tobis Endowed lecture Series. A professor in the Medical School beginning in 1970, Dr. Tobis founded UCI’s geriatric medicine program chaired and chaired the ethics committee from 1986-2000. It was fitting therefore that the first speaker in the Tobis series was Dr. Christine Cassel, the CEO of the National Quality Forum. Following introductions by Aaron Kheriaty, the Director of the Medical Ethics Program, Doug Haynes, the Director of the Medical Humanities Initiative, Kristen Monroe, UCI Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality, and a welcome from the Tobis family, Dr. Cassel launched into an engaging talk dealing with some of the difficulties of End of Life Care. She touched on the history of palliative care as a discipline and the hospice movement, the move to legalize assisted suicide, and the ways that doctors can try to better understand their patients’ wishes at the end of life. She ended with the following video, on empathy in the context of hospitals, before a lively half hour Q & A moderated by Dr. Kheriaty.