Health Law Mediation Training

Mediation Training 

Offered by the AHLA Alternative Dispute Resolution Service in partnership with the Hamline University School of Law, a leader in dispute resolution and health law



Mediation Training: Friday, October 19, 2012 from 8:30 am-5:30 pm (Central); Saturday, October 20, 2012 from 8:30 am-5:30 pm; and Sunday, October 21, 2012 from 8:30 am-12:30 pm.


You will acquire the knowledge and skills to mediate a health law dispute effectively and ethically. The training is highly interactive and provides extensive coaching and feedback. All participants will have the opportunity to practice mediating a case from start to finish.

Topics will include:         

• An overview of the mediation process and the mediator’s role


• Preparing for a productive mediation session


• How mediation begins


• Accumulating information and developing the agenda


• Generating movement


• Use of separate sessions (caucuses) 


• Ending the mediation (with and without agreement)


• Mediation ethics


• An opportunity for everyone to conduct a mediation from start to finish observed by a coach who will give individualized feedback

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"Saving Hope" Dramatization of CCB Hearing

In "Heartsick," this week's episode of Saving Hope, Charlie was an
incapacitated patient.  Charlie's ex-wife and fiance, Alex and Dawn, disagreed about his
treatment plan.  They argued their cases in front of a Consent and
Capacity Board panel.




Alex and Dawn had
very different views of what Charlie would want. Dawn believed he'd want to die
with dignity and never want to be in a helpless, vegetative state for the rest
of his life. Alex was insistent that Charlie was still in there and he would
want to try everything possible so he could fight to come back. Each woman had
various pieces of evidence to back up her claims.

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Death Denial - Norman Rockwell

I was intrigued by this painting, " Second Holiday," that I saw yesterday afternoon at the Cummer Museum in Jacksonville, Florida.  Norman Rockwell created this illustration for a short story in American Magazine in 1939. The short story takes place at a clinic in Minnesota, where an elderly couple sits in a waiting room. 




Avoiding eye contact, the man and woman sit side by side and stare into space as their arms intertwine. The couple thinks of their visit to the clinic as a “holiday” due to the fact that it is only their “second” time away from their hometown in decades. And although the elderly woman is sick and dying, both the husband and the wife refuse to accept this reality in order to protect and support one other.

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ASBH 2012 Annual Meeting - Brochure

The 2012 Annual Meeting brochure for ASBH is now available here.

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NHS Trust v. Baby X - British Court Orders Baby Removed from Ventilator over Parents' Objections

Mr Justice Hedley at London's High Court has
ruled that a brain-damaged
baby should be allowed to die even though his deeply religious parents want him
kept alive on a life-support machine.  (The reported case opinion is here.)  

The one-year-old had a
'catastrophic accident' in May and is in a coma.  But Justice Hedley ruled
that it's in the child's best interests if he is now given palliative care.
 He said it was 'unrealistic' that his condition would ever improve and
said doctors had told him that any treatment had now become 'futile'.  

The parents said their
faith meant that they have resisted switching off their son's life support
machine, and said they believed that 'where there's life there's hope'.  But consultants told the
judge that the child lacked awareness of his surroundings, showed no
interaction or recognition of his parents and didn't cry or smile. One
doctor said: 'In my opinion Baby X no longer has the human instinct and desire
to survive'.

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In re GS: Ontario CCB Permits Hospital to Stop Heroic Measures

The Ontario Consent and
Capacity Board has ruled that an Ottawa hospital can stop
"heroic measures" for GS, a 90-year-old car crash victim.  (The
Reason for Decision is here.)
 

The patient's daughter and substitute decision maker objected.
 But the CCB ruled that the daughter was bound by GS's advance directive.
 The board also deemed the proposed treatment plan to be in GS’s best
interests. “Nothing in evidence suggested that, in these circumstances, GS
would want to be subject to unnecessary medical interventions … All of the
evidence made plain that GS had a very poor quality of life and that the
situation would not improve. GS was subjected to daily indignities through
invasive medical procedures without increasing the likelihood that he would
recover any awareness or consciousness.”

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Delaware End-of-Life Coalition

I was pleased to see that the Delaware End-of-Life Coalition, an organization with which I was involved when I worked in Delaware 2007-2011, has launched a fresh, new website.  

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