Career in Bioethics

[Tangerine123]

Hey everyone. I'm currently in a combined PhD/Psych Residency program and facing the following situation

This year i've read more humanistic literature than papers for my actual line of research. I'm devouring books in the realms of Philosophy, History, Ethics, Sociology, Anthropology and Religion among others. My sister studied Philosophy and I find it so engaging and enriching to sit down with her and discuss topics for 2,3,4 hours. I'm becomming more and more fascinated by topics related to death, such as Suicide/Euthanasia/Abortion/Death Penalty/End-of-life care.

I'll 100% finish my PhD/Residency. But I'm now pondering the idea of pursuing a career in an Ethics Comittee / IRB as an alternative to a pure clinical/research route. How does one get into this field? Is being a member of an Ethics Comittee a full time job that you can work towards? Or is it a part time job for Attendings/PIs that are doing their own research? I've seen some nice Bioethics Masters programs. Would completing one in the future help me?

There isn't that much info about this topic online, and the sources I find tend to be inconsistent and contradictive. I'll approach the members of the IRB at my hospital for more information; but any external comments, experiences and suggestions are more than welcome!

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[TelemarketingEnigma]

First distinction: are you more interested in clinical ethics (Hospital Ethics Committee) or research ethics (IRB)? I can speak a bit more to the clinical ethics side, but I imagine somebody here can chime in about IRBS (and there's likely plenty of overlap)

Hospital ethics committees are usually very multidisciplinary. It is typically not a full time job by itself, BUT may include people who make a full time job out of doing ethics related work (research, teaching, etc). The one I've participated in most at our children's hospital is chaired by a practicing developmental pediatrician (who did an MD/PhD, with the PhD focused on history of medicine). It includes a full time professor of ethics (PhD, and chairs the adult ethics committee), a lot of folks from the peds palliative care team, community representatives (specifically a disability activist, a parent of a disabled child, and a local judge), hospital administrators (not really sure what their titles or training are, but they know the hospital policies backwards and forwards), pastoral care team, social workers, and various nurses/doctors/students from different specialties depending on the cases being discussed.

There are definitely people who make a full career out of both clinical and research ethics, usually in academia. I don't know if a masters alone is the best option for you since you'll already have a PhD, but its certainly on the table. You may want to look into post doc/fellowship positions - I know of one at Penn that's focused on genomics ethics (a LOT of bioethics funding comes from the ELSI program NHGRI, so there's a lot of that kind of work going on), but there may be other programs out there with different focuses

Penn Medical Ethics and Health Policy | ELSI Genomics Postdoctoral Training Program

About the Fellowship The mission of the 3-year Penn Postdoctoral Training Program in the Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) of Genetics and Genomics, supported by a training grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute, is to prepare junior scholars for success as...

medicalethicshealthpolicy.med.upenn.edu

 

[sloop]

Hey everyone. I'm currently in a combined PhD/Psych Residency program and facing the following situation

This year i've read more humanistic literature than papers for my actual line of research. I'm devouring books in the realms of Philosophy, History, Ethics, Sociology, Anthropology and Religion among others. My sister studied Philosophy and I find it so engaging and enriching to sit down with her and discuss topics for 2,3,4 hours. I'm becomming more and more fascinated by topics related to death, such as Suicide/Euthanasia/Abortion/Death Penalty/End-of-life care.

I'll 100% finish my PhD/Residency. But I'm now pondering the idea of pursuing a career in an Ethics Comittee / IRB as an alternative to a pure clinical/research route. How does one get into this field? Is being a member of an Ethics Comittee a full time job that you can work towards? Or is it a part time job for Attendings/PIs that are doing their own research? I've seen some nice Bioethics Masters programs. Would completing one in the future help me?

There isn't that much info about this topic online, and the sources I find tend to be inconsistent and contradictive. I'll approach the members of the IRB at my hospital for more information; but any external comments, experiences and suggestions are more than welcome!

For context, I’m a senior psychiatry resident and studied philosophy in college. I have many similar interests (within the realm of the psychiatric interface with medical ethics. I will be doing a forensic psychiatry fellowship.

You ask several questions and I’ll try to answer as many as possible.

The first seems to be whether people participate in ethics committees full time. The answer to this is no. There really isn’t much of a career to be made primarily doing ethics committee work. These are generally clinicians and researchers who also volunteer to be part of the ethics committee. Having an ethics committee is important for a hospital but it is not lucrative. You’re generally not going to be offered a salary primarily for participating in one.

The second question is whether doing a bioethics masters would help. The answer to this is that it won’t help with the above goal. The goal of a career primarily consisting of ethics committee work is pretty much unrealistic, regardless of training. I’m sure that these masters programs may be helpful if you want to pursue bioethics research, however.

A third question which seems implicit in your post seems to be whether it is feasible to have a career primarily focused on bioethics. As a general rule, I don’t think this is realistic, either. My impression is that most people who do bioethics work are primarily either clinicians or researchers with other areas of interest. It is likely very difficult to obtain the sort of funding from this area of research that would allow you to support your own salary (as is the case for most faculty researchers who have no or minimal clinical time).

Overall, I think that the best bet for someone interested in this area is to get a position that is primarily either clinical or research-based in some other (possibly related) area, but pursue bioethics endeavors as an additional area of interest. If you’re able to gather some significant funding for these activities, you might be able to focus more on them, but I wouldn’t necessarily have this as an expectation.

 

[TelemarketingEnigma]

My impression is that most people who do bioethics work are primarily either clinicians or researchers with other areas of interest.

I think this is a good impression. I attended a careers in bioethics panel at ASBH a few years back - one of the big points that was made is that bioethics isn't usually something you enter by itself (like straight from undergrad) - most bioethicists have some kind of previous expertise or interest that leads them to bioethics and informs their work (and also probably pays some/all of their salary). It may be clinical (doctors, nurses, genetic counselors, etc) or more academic (ie philosophers, though idk how many people get to do that by itself either). I've definitely met some people in the academic world who do almost full time bioethics, but that usually includes some kind of other responsibility like teaching or admin, and funding definitely isn't easy (I met them while working in the research funding world, so they were the privileged few who actually got the grants)

 

[sloop]

[. . .] or more academic (ie philosophers, though idk how many people get to do that by itself either).

Yeah, I think that is also rare. My philosophy advisor in undergrad, when I was vaguely considering a PhD in philosophy, made this clear to me. While he said that I would make a great colleague, he painted a rather dismal picture of the career prospects in philosophy. You are considered very lucky if you land any sort of academic position, even just as an instructor at a community college. There is very little funding for research in philosophy and even if you land an academic position, teaching is going to be a lot of what you do. There are a ton of philosophy PhDs who are highly underemployed considering they have advanced degrees.

Ultimately, I decided that, ironically, I could probably fruitfully pursue more of my philosophical interests by becoming a physician with ethics interests than by pursuing a PhD in philosophy.