A Dialogue on the Work of Nancy Neveloff Dubler (1941-2024)

Adira Hulkower, JD – Montefiore Medical Center

Abstract: Bioethicist scholar Nancy Neveloff Dubler was a force of nature. As a lawyer turned bioethicist, she was a highly impactful scholar of clinical ethics, who pursued justice as an advocate for the marginalized and vulnerable. In 2004, she co-authored the landmark work Bioethics Mediation, pioneering a novel approach for bedside conflicts. In this panel, three presenters explore her scholarly legacy to the field of bioethics. The first presenter explores Dubler’s transformative contributions to ethics consultation. The presenter argues that Dubler’s Distinctive methodology resists the epistemic harms of “speaking for” patients by fostering an inclusive process of dialogic engagement. Contrasting this approach with traditional consultation models, this talk examines how the tools of bioethics mediation create space for “speaking with” stakeholders, embodying a deliberative, participatory, and context-sensitive process of HCEC. The second presenter explores Dubler’s opposition to “benevolent deception,” arguing that it compromises the integrity of ethics consultants, erodes trust, and distorts ethical mediation. This talk reaffirms her vision by proposing a trust-oriented approach that fosters shared deliberation and cultural respect when caring for patients from cultures that endorse benevolent deception. In the third presentation, the speaker will argue that the best way to protect Dubler's legacy of “bioethics mediation” is to relocate the function of mediation from ethics consultation services to the offices of patient & guest relations. Given the recent shift in ethics consultation practice away from interpersonal facilitation to physician-focused recommendation, the widespread need for clinical conflict management is unlikely to be met by a hospital’s ethics service.

Keywords: Ethics consultation, mediation, conflict resolution