Ethical Care

Jessica Ginsberg is a Clinical Ethicist at Wellstar. Jessica received her BA in Middle East and South Asian Studies from Emory University. Thereafter, she enrolled in a dual degree graduate program where she received her Juris Doctor and Master of Arts in Bioethics at Emory University. After graduating, she practiced workers’ compensation law in Atlanta. Jessica then completed the Wellstar Fellowship in Clinical Ethics. She is thrilled to continue her career in clinical ethics as a Clinical Ethicist at Wellstar. Jessica’s areas of interest include legal and ethical issues in reproductive ethics, end of life ethics, organ donation and transplantation ethics, the intersection of law, religion and bioethics, and clinical ethics consultation.

Publications

• To Procure or Not to Procure: Hospitals Face Significant Ethical Dilemmas Regarding Organ Donation During the COVID-19 Pandemic The American Journal of Bioethics (2020)
• Avoid Myths When Considering ‘Death with Dignity’ Bills The Augusta Chronicle (2020)
• Balancing Scientific Progress With Pediatric Protections: No Direct Benefit Now, But Potential Novel Therapy in the Future The American Journal of Bioethics (2020)
• When a Coronavirus Patient Requests to Leave AMA Journal of Radiology Nursing (2020)

Bryan Kibbe, PhD, HEC-C, is a certified healthcare ethics consultant. He works with frontline healthcare workers and patients and their families to address and resolve challenging ethical questions, dilemmas, and issues that frequently arise in healthcare settings. He completed his doctorate in philosophy in 2014 and a fellowship in advanced bioethics at the Cleveland Clinic in 2016. In addition to ethics consultation work, Dr. Kibbe contributes to organizational policy development, conducts scholarship, and provides ethics related education to healthcare professionals and others. Dr. Kibbe’s research interests include the ways in which healthcare technologies intersect with, inform, fulfill, imperil, and otherwise shape ethical ideals and norms in healthcare, as well as the work of moral repair after harms and errors occur.

Publications

• Stakeholder Bias in Best Practice Advisories: An Ethical Perspective Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (2020)
• The Feasibility of Implementing Normative Claims That Are Especially Strong and Important The American Journal of Bioethics (2020)
• How to Deal with Challenging Family Situations Society of Critical Care Medicine (2019)
• Cases from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation: What's Knowledge Got to Do with It? Ethics, Epistemology, and Intractable Conflicts in the Medical Setting The Journal of Clinical Ethics (2016)

Jason Lesandrini is the Assistant Vice President for Ethics, Advance Care Planning, and Spiritual Health at Wellstar. In his current role, Jason provides leadership and resources to promote ethical behavior and decision-making aligned with the mission, vision, and values of the health system. He received his BA in Philosophy from Michigan State University, his MA in Philosophy from Georgia State University, and is currently working on his PhD in Healthcare Ethics. Jason’s research expertise lies in the areas of ethics programming and organizational ethics and how organizations establish robust ethics departments to deliver on their mission, vision, and values.

Publications

• Impact of a Novel Method of Ethics Education on Nurse Leaders’ Capacity for Moral Decision-Making: An Exploratory Qualitative Study Nurse Leader (2021)
• Community Outreach and Ethics Services Ethics & Medics (2020)
• Stakeholder Bias in Best Practice Advisories: An Ethical Perspective Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (2020)
• How Much Volume Should Healthcare Ethics Consult Services Have? The Journal of Clinical Ethics (2020)
• Justice: An Experiential Learning Exercise for Physician Assistant Students Journal of Physician Assistant Education (2018)

Hilary Mabel is a Clinical Ethicist and Fellowship Supervisor at Wellstar. She specializes in clinical ethics consultation with a focus on providing compassionate decision-making support to patients and families and pragmatic guidance to healthcare colleagues. Hilary has experience designing and leading hospital-based ethics programs, advancing organizational ethics and values-based alignment efforts, providing moral distress support to healthcare colleagues, and teaching conceptual content and skills-based competencies to a variety of learners.

In her capacity as Fellowship Supervisor, Hilary oversees the Wellstar Fellowship in Clinical Ethics. She designs the fellowship’s curriculum and training components to prepare graduates to deliver quality ethics consultation, engage in other fundamental clinical ethics activities, and serve as leaders in clinical ethics. Leading the fellowship program aligns with her commitment to professionalization of the field.

Hilary also serves on the HCEC Certification Commission, which oversees and administers the field’s Healthcare Ethics Consultant-Certified program.

She received her JD from Harvard Law School and her BA from the University of Florida, and she completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Advanced Bioethics at the Cleveland Clinic. Prior to joining Wellstar and after completing her fellowship training, Hilary worked as a clinical ethicist at the Cleveland Clinic, where she led the ethics programs at two hospitals and served as the Associate Director of the Clinical Ethics Immersion Program. Prior to transitioning into bioethics, Hilary practiced law.

Her research and scholarship centers on complex issues in clinical ethics, professionalization of the field, moral distress, clinical ethics programming and program development, transgender care and bioethics, and reproductive ethics.

Barquiesha Madison is an Administrative Secretary in the Wellstar Ethics Program where she assists with administrative tasks and supports the research of the program. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Georgia with a B.S. in Genetics. During her undergrad years, she participated in genetics research where she characterized early meiosis in female threespine stickleback fish and investigated synaptonemal complex length differences between male and female sticklebacks. Moreover, Barquiesha served as a lab technician at UGA’s Population Health lab, which led to the co-authorship of her first research paper that investigates the ability of different C. perfringens strains and homogenates to reproduce focal duodenal necrosis in chickens. She is currently in the process of publishing her second co-authored research paper that is based on her undergraduate thesis on meiosis, which has also afforded her the UGA Undergraduate Thesis Award. In the near future, Barquiesha looks forward to a career in medicine, which blends her passions for research, education, and health.

Publications

• Focal Duodenal Necrosis in Chickens: Attempts to Reproduce the Disease Experimentally and Diagnostic Considerations Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation (2020)
• Sexual Dimorphism of Synaptonemal Complex Length in Threespine Stickleback Fish BioRxiv (2020)

Dr. Kate Molchan is a Clinical Ethicist at Wellstar Health System in Atlanta, Georgia. She completed her Doctor of Philosophy in Healthcare Ethics at Duquesne University, a Master of Arts in Bioethics and a Doctor of Jurisprudence from Case Western Reserve University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Westminster College. Her research interests include clinical ethics, advance directives and medical decision making, and the intersection of organizational ethics and patient safety. Dr. Molchan is also a licensed attorney and has previously served as Assistant General Counsel for Health Sciences at West Virginia University.

Publications

• Further Benefits of Imminent Death Donation American Journal of Transplantation (2021)

Dr. David Reis is a researcher with a background in behavioral neuroscience and one of the program coordinators for the Wellstar Ethics Program. At Wellstar, Dr. Reis is involved in all aspects of research conducted in the Ethics Program, including grant writing, data analysis, and the development of research protocols and ethics curricula. He received his BA in neuroscience from Carthage College and went on to earn his MS and PhD in psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he studied the behavioral and molecular mechanisms underlying learning and memory. Dr. Reis has also completed post-doctoral training in the psychology department at Emory University in Atlanta where he studied the effects of emotional salience on various forms of learning. With expertise in behavioral research, his current research interests are focused around identifying contextual influences of ethical behavior and decision-making within organizations and uncovering novel ways to promote and improve ethical culture and climate.

Publications

• Now is the Perfect Time to Ask Your Employees About Their Moral Distress Ethical Systems (2020)
• Decreased Cued Fear Discrimination Learning in Female Rats as a Function of Estrous Phase Learning & Memory (2019)
• Memory Formation for Trace Fear Conditioning Requires Ubiquitin-Proteasome Mediated Protein Degradation in the Prefrontal Cortex Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience (2013)
• Optogenetic Stimulation of the Basolateral Amygdala Accelerates Acquisition of Object-Context Associations Behavioral Neuroscience

Steven Shields is a Clinical Ethicist at Wellstar Health System. In addition to performing clinical ethics consultations, Steven also teaches ethics throughout the health system, with a specific focus on Nursing Residents and Nursing Fellows Ethics lecture series. He received his BA in political science and philosophy from Spring Hill College, his MA in religious studies from Georgia State University, and his JD from Mercer University. Steven’s research interests are focused on the intersection of law and ethics, the impact of religious beliefs on medical decision-making, the rights of incarcerated persons, and professionalization of the field of clinical ethics.

Publications

• Palliative Sedation, Compassionate Extubation, and the Principle of Double Effect: An Ethical Analysis American Journal of Hospice & Palliative Medicine (2021)
• Demonstrating Value Through Tracking Ethics Program Activities Beyond Ethics Consultations The Journal of Clinical Ethics (2020)
• When a Coronavirus Patient Requests to Leave AMA Journal of Radiology Nursing (2020)
• Ethics, Compliance, and the Law: What Am I Allowed to Do Versus What Should I Do? Journal of Physician Assistant Education (2019
• Stop My Dad's Suffering: Bridging the Gap Between Comfort Care and Euthanasia Society of Critical Care Medicine ( 2019)

Lexi C. White is a Clinical Ethics Fellow at Wellstar Health System in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her B.A. in Anthropology and Communication from University of Southern California, her J.D. from Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, and her Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from Arizona State University in the Summer of 2022. Prior to starting her Fellowship with Wellstar, Lexi worked in public health as a researcher and supervisor for ASU’s COVID-19 Response Team overseeing case investigations and contact tracing in Maricopa County, Arizona. Lexi is interested in the intersection of law, ethics, culture, and practice surrounding surrogate decision-making, confidentiality, and truth-telling. She is also interested in metrics for the professionalization of clinical ethics.

Selected Publications

• From [A]ntrax to [Z]ika: Key Lessons in Public Health Legal Preparedness, Indiana Health Law Review (2018)
• “Gaming the System” During Public Health Emergencies, Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics (2021)
• Hard paths, soft paths or no paths? Cross-cultural perceptions of water solutions, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (2014)

Certifications

Licensed Attorney - Arizona

Websites

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• LinkedIn

Jamila Young is a Program Coordinator at Wellstar. Within her role, she assists the department in projects centering around education pertaining to healthcare bias and ethics in healthcare, and she facilitates the intern program. She has years of experience in health advocacy and is a licensed attorney. Prior to her current position, she served for several years as a health policy and advocacy professional in local, state, and national positions. Jamila is a native of Albany, Georgia and received her BA in English from Kennesaw State University, JD from the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University School of Law, and her LLM in Health Law and Policy at Hofstra University. Her research interests include end of life care, bias in healthcare, LGBTQ healthcare, and race and social justice. She is also dedicated to serving her community in the fields of autism, mental health, and maternal mortality.

Publications

• When Higher Risk Does Not Equal Greater Harm: Doing the Most Good in a Limited Pediatric Study Population The American Journal of Bioethics (2020)