Institute of Clinical Bioethics to Serve as Consultant for Aria-Jefferson Health

PHILADELPHIA (October 22, 2016) – Saint Joseph’s University’s Institute of Clinical Bioethics (ICB) recently announced its partnership with Aria-Jefferson Health. The ICB will serve as the system’s bioethics consultant for three local Aria hospitals: Torresdale, Frankford and Bucks County.

The ICB will be responsible for the ethics education of 115 medical interns and residents in internal medicine, emergency medicine, family medicine, podiatry, radiology and surgery, as well as for medical and nursing students on rotation. The education will consist of formal ethics lectures and ethics teaching rounds.

“We at the ICB are thrilled to announce this new consultancy relationship,” says Institute director Peter Clark, S.J. ’75. “This affiliation will enables us to further our mission of serving the individual bioethics needs of Philadelphia-area Catholic and nonsectarian health care systems. We also hope to place health administration and education graduate students in these hospitals for clinical rotations in the course, Fieldwork in Clinical Bioethics.”

Established in 2006, the ICB promotes interdisciplinary research, educational programs, academic courses, clinical consultation and policy development services in the field of bioethics. Its current clients include Shriners Hospital for Children and St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, both in Philadelphia; Mercy Health System of Pennsylvania; Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland; Catholic Charities of Maryland; and most recently, the Caritas Baby Hospital in Bethlehem, Palestine. On behalf of the Mercy Health System, the Institute also operates ethics consult services, offering consultations 24/7, on clinical cases that staff, patients, family and others find ethically complex.

Aria-Jefferson Health, previously called Aria Health, was recently purchased by Jefferson Health System and renamed. The newly formed organization encompasses Aria Health, Jefferson Health and Thomas Jefferson University. Together, the system serves the greater Philadelphia area with 23,000 employees, 5,000 physicians and practitioners, and 2,217 inpatient beds.