Christine I. Mitchell

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Christine I. Mitchell BSN, MS, MTS
Christine Mitchell.jpg Christine Mitchell.jpg Christine Mitchell teaching
Native name	Christine I. Mitchell
Born	(1951-12-08) December 8, 1951 Gardner, Massachusetts, USA
🏡 Residence	Boston, Massachusetts
🏳️ Nationality	American
🏳️ Citizenship	USA
🏫 Education	Boston University: MSN, MS Harvard Divinity School: MTS
🎓 Alma mater	Boston University, MSN, MS; Harvard University, MTS
💼 Occupation	Educational filmmaker and bioethicist
📆 Years active	1979 to present
👔 Employer	Harvard Medical School
🏢 Organization	Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, Boston University
Known for	Ethics videos, and shaping field of clinical ethics consultations for morally difficult issues
Notable work	“Code Gray: Ethical Dilemmas in Nursing”
🏡 Home town	Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts
Movement	Universal human right to benefit from the contributions of science
Board member of	American Society for Bioethics and Humanities’s Clinical Ethics Consultation Affairs standing committee; Ethics Advisory Board of the Human Brain Project's Ethics and Society Subproject; Editorial Board of the American Society for Law, Medicine, and Ethics
👩 Spouse(s)	Married to Gordon Jack Schultz
👶 Children	Three sons
👴 👵 Parent(s)	Charles William Mitchell and Pauline Elinor (LaBay) Mitchell, both deceased
🏅 Awards	1983, MNA Nursing Practice Award, Massachusetts Nursing Association (MNA) 1984 Academy Award nomination, short documentary Code Gray: Ethical Dilemmas in Nursing 1985, MNA Image of the Professional Nurse Award - Christine I. Mitchell, Massachusetts Nursing Association (MNA) 2004, International Freddie Award for medical media 2010, Living Legends in Massachusetts Nursing Award, American Nurses Association Massachusetts 2016, John A. Rezendes Visiting Scholar in Ethics Lecture: "Real-World Questions in Clincal Ethics", The Honors College, University of Maine, April 20, 2016 @ 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm 2018, Nursing Ethics Leadership Award, National Nursing Ethics Conference 2018, Vice President, Association of Bioethics Program Directors, whose membership is open to directors of U.S. and Canadian academic bioethics programs based in accredited universities or colleges meeting ABPD's criteria.
🌐 Website	HMS Center for Bioethics profile page for Christine Mitchell

Christine I. Mitchell (born December 8, 1951) is an influential American filmmaker and bioethicist and the executive director of the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School (HMS).

Films and media

Mitchell's first ethics media was an instructional interactive computer videodisc in 1990, Nursing Ethics and Law, which she produced with two collaborators.

With filmmaker Ben Achtenberg (with whom she has worked for over 26 years, and sometimes with others) she has produced six documentary videos. She was an associate producer of "Code Gray: Ethical Dilemmas in Nursing", a documentary film, which was nominated for (but not awarded) an Academy Award in 1984; their 2002 video, Stanley, about ethical decisions in caring for a patient with end stage renal failure, was part of a 3-film documentary series and awarded a 2004 Freddie award for medical media. Their 2003 video, Everyday Choices, concerned a visiting nurse and an elderly patient facing ethical questions about waning capacities and independence.

She is an advisor to The Refugee Media Project, sponsored by The Center for Independent Documentary, also of Boston.

Career

She is known for her role in shaping the field in clinical ethics consultations for morally difficult issues in hospital settings. She is a founding member of the American Society for Bioethics Consultation, on which she currently serves, and American Society for Bioethics and Humanities’s Clinical Ethics Consultation Affairs standing committee, and most recently, the Ethics Advisory Board of the Human Brain Project's Ethics and Society Subproject, funded by the European Commission. She is a former president of the American Society for Law, Medicine, and Ethics, where she serves on the Editorial Board of its journal, and the Freedom from Cancer Challenge, where she is a project Advisor.

Mitchell developed an interest in nursing ethics during her years at Boston University, which led her to pursue a Master of Theological Studies degree emphasizing ethics at Harvard University and the Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge. Between those two programs, however, she practiced clinical nursing for several years in Boston and Charlottesville, Virginia, where she became Assistant Professor of Nursing at University of Virginia School of Nursing.

Prior to her role with Harvard's Center for Bioethics, formerly the Division of Medical Ethics (DME) (where she had been Associate Director before its reorganization), she taught ethics and professional courses for medical students and in the Master of Bioethics Degree Program while on the faculty of the HMS Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. Her research focuses on clinical ethics consultation and public engagement in bioethics policies, including end-of-life issues, assisted reproductive technologies, and resource allocation related to major natural disasters or pandemics. Mitchell also leads the Ethics Leadership Group for Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals and health care facilities. She has contributed to the development of nursing ethics as a discipline.

Center for Bioethics

Mitchell has been involved in ethics work at Boston Children’s Hospital, where she founded the hospital’s ethics program, directed the hospital’s ethics consultation service, and led its Ethics Advisory Committee for thirty years. She has provided ethics consultation at Massachusetts General Hospital, Baystate Medical Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, North Shore Medical Center in Salem, Massachusetts, and Maine Medical Center.

In the Center for Bioethics, Mitchell co-founded with Carol Powers, JD, the volunteer citizen Community Ethics Committee for “informed public input on ethical aspects of health care and health policies." She also developed the annual Harvard Clinical Bioethics Course, leads monthly clinical ethics and Harvard Research Ethics Consortia, and teaches in the HMS Fellowship in Bioethics Program.

Professional Career

Since 2002, Mitchell has edited ethics cases for The Journal of Clinical Ethics, where she has been on the Editorial Board since 1989 and is currently its Associate Editor. She lectures outside Harvard on clinical ethics issues In 2009, the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities formed the Clinical Ethics Consultation Affairs standing committee (CECA) in order to address growing concerns that those providing clinical ethics consultation (CEC) were unqualified. Because whatever can be learned can also be taught, CECA was charged to define, rationalize and establish, and develop educational means to improve and then certify professional competencies in those providing CEC at both basic and advanced levels. This was identified in the Core Competencies for Health Care Ethics Consultation (2nd Edition). In this Report, CECA defines and recommends to the ASBH Board how to evaluate such competence and a role for ASBH in this process.

She is a clinical practice team member of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, which produced A Blueprint for 21st Century Nursing Ethics: Report of the National Nursing Summit. She is a member of the advisory committee for the Cambridge Consortium for Bioethics Education, which produces and publishes Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. She also is an Advisory Board member of the Neuroethics Network (Paris).

In 2018, she was elected Vice President of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors, whose membership is open to directors of U.S. and Canadian academic bioethics programs based in accredited universities or colleges meeting ABPD's criteria. In 2018 she participated in the World Congress of Bioethics and a conference in honor of the 70th anniversary of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UDHR, on the human right to science at the University of Copenhagen, following publication of her 2017 article on that topic with Harvard geneticist George M. Church.

Academic Appointments

• 2014-present - Executive Director, Center for Bioethics, Harvard Medical School
• 1993-2014 - Associate Director (Previously Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer), Harvard Medical School Division of Medical Ethics, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine
• Visiting Professor, DeMontfort University, Leicester, UK
• Co-PI, End-of-Life Care Project, University of Zurich, Department of Biomedical Ethics and University Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland
• 1991-2014 - Hospital Ethicist and Director, Office of Ethics, Children's Hospital, Boston.
• 1982-1983 - Course Professor, Ethical issues in Health Care, Graduate Program, Boston University School of Nursing, Boston, Massachusetts
• 1976-1979 - Assistant Professor of Nursing, University of Virginia School of Nursing, Charlottesville, Virginia

Education

Mitchell studied nursing at Boston University, where she earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the field. She then studied philosophical and religious ethics and the ethics of care at Harvard University and the Harvard Divinity School, where she earned a master’s degree.

• 1969 - Narragansett Regional High School, Baldwinville, Massachusetts, diploma
• 1973 - Boston University, School of Nursing, Boston, Massachusetts, BSN
• 1979 - Boston University, School of Nursing, Boston, Massachusetts, MS, Nursing and Pediatrics
• 1982 - Harvard Divinity School/Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MTS, Ethics
• 1991-1994 - Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, PhD (ABD), Ethics, Philosophy, Nursing (University Fellow)

Ethics Fellowships:

• 1979-1981 - Harvard Medical School, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Fellow in Medical Ethics, Interfaculty Program of Harvard University but done at HMS
• 1993-1994 - Harvard University, Fellowship in Ethics and the Professions at Safra Center

Awards

• 1983, MNA Nursing Practice Award, Massachusetts Nursing Association (MNA)
• 1984 Academy Award nomination, short documentary Code Gray: Ethical Dilemmas in Nursing
• 1985, MNA Image of the Professional Nurse Award - Christine I. Mitchell, Massachusetts Nursing Association (MNA)
• 2004, International Freddie Award for medical media
• 2010, Living Legends in Massachusetts Nursing Award, American Nurses Association Massachusetts
• 2016, John A. Rezendes Visiting Scholar in Ethics Lecture: "Real-World Questions in Clincal Ethics", The Honors College, University of Maine, April 20, 2016 @ 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
• 2018, Nursing Ethics Leadership Award, National Nursing Ethics Conference
• 2018, President-Elect, Association of Bioethics Program Directors, whose membership is open to directors of U.S. and Canadian academic bioethics programs based in accredited universities or colleges meeting ABPD's criteria.

Publications

Christine Mitchell has published on the ethics of medical practice, end-of-life care, pediatrics, fetal medicine, gender, oncology, reality medical television, religion, and current topics in bioethics. Her interests recently have expanded to the [[universal human right to benefit from the progress of science.

Selected bibliography

• Porsdam Mann S, Mitchell C, Bradley VJ, Chou MF, Church G, Mann M, Donders Y, Porsdam H (2017) Advocating for science progress as a human right. PNAS 115(43):10820-10823. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1816320115 PMID: 30352870.
• Carrese JA, Antommaria AH, Berkowitz KA, Berger J, Carrese J, Childs BH, Derse AR, Gallagher C, Gallagher JA, Goodman-Crews P, Heesters A, Jurchak M, Mitchell C, Mokwyune N, Parsi K, Powell T, Powderly KE, Rosell T, Shelton W, Smith ML, Spike J, Tarzian A, Wocial L. HCEC pearls and pitfalls: suggested do's and don't's for healthcare ethics consultants. J Clin Ethics. 2012; 23(3):234-40. PMID: 23256404. View in: PubMed
• Truog RD, Mitchell C. Futility--from hospital policies to state laws. Am J Bioeth. 2006 Sep-Oct; 6(5):19-21; discussion W30-2. PMID: 16997814. View in: PubMed
• Mitchell C, Truog RD. When a village is not enough. J Clin Ethics. 2006; 17(1):79. PMID: 16689117. View in: PubMed
• Mitchell C. A mother's death: the story of "Margaret's" children. J Clin Ethics. 2006; 17(4):331-2. PMID: 17330724. View in: PubMed
• Robinson EM, Mitchell C, Brackett S, Wise M, Cantanno-Evans T, Doherty R, French B. Development and Implementation of an Interdisciplinary Ethics Resource Program, Massachusetts General Hospital Research Day-Poster presentation (2004)
• Mitchell C, Truog RD. Excerpts from the ethics consult report: MT. J Clin Ethics. 2004; 15(3):302-6. PMID: 15630874. View in: PubMed
• Mitchell C, Truog RD. A bridge to nowhere. J Clin Ethics. 2003; 14(3):189. PMID: 14740354. View in: PubMed
• Mitchell C, Truog RD. Irene's story. J Clin Ethics. 2002; 13(3):230-1. PMID: 12624890. View in: PubMed
• Mitchell C, Truog RD. Case reports from the Harvard Ethics Consortium. J Clin Ethics. 2002; 13(1):49-53. PMID: 12235682. View in: PubMed
• Mitchell C. "Integrity in interpersonal relationships. In George J. Agich, ed. Responsibility in Health Care (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1981), pp 163-164.

On pediatrics ethics and clinical ethics consultation:

• Clinical Ethics in Pediatrics: A Case-Based Textbook
  • Referenced in Ethical Issues in Neurology (by James Bernat)
• ASBH Clinical Ethics Standing Committee:
  • HCEC Pearls and Pitfalls: Suggested Do’s and Don’t’s for Healthcare Ethics Consultants
  • 1985-1987 American Nurses’ Association Committee on Ethics (member)

See also

• Nursing ethics
• Patient advocacy

• Philosophy of healthcare
• Right to science and culture

External references

• Harvard Catalyst profile for Christine Mitchell
• Researchgate profile for Christine Mitchell

References

Category:Harvard Medical School faculty Category:Women philosophers Category:Nurses Category:American nurses Category:20th-century American women writers Category:21st-century American women writers Category:21st-century philosophers Category:20th-century philosophers by nationality Category:Clinical medicine Category:Nurses by nationality Category:Harvard Medical School faculty Category:Harvard Divinity School alumni Category:Ethicists Category:Boston University alumni Category:Boston College alumni Category:American physicians Category:1951 births Category:Film people Category:Filmmakers from Massachusetts

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